HANDLING SESSIONS AND COOKIES - HTTP Programming Recipes for Java Bots - page 269

{
Map<String, String> map = FormUtility.parse(query);
return map.get("session");
} else
return null;
Once the session id has been obtained, the search function can be called.
Performing the Search
The search method submits the search form and reads the results from that search.
The session id must be attached to the URL that is posted to.
The search method begins by setting up several variables that will be needed. The
states or capitals returned from the search will be in an HTML list. So the starting and end-
ing tags, which in this case are <ul> and </ul> , are stored in the variables listType
and listTypeEnd . Additionally, a StringBuilder , named buffer is created to
hold the HTML text as it is encountered. The boolean capture variable indicates if text is
currently being captured to the StringBuilder .
String listType = "ul";
String listTypeEnd = "/ul";
StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder();
boolean capture = false;
List<String> result = new ArrayList<String>();
The FormUtility class is designed to output to an OutputStream . For an
HTTP POST response, this will be fine. The three calls to the add method below setup the
different required name-value pairs for the form.
// Build the URL.
ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
FormUtility form = new FormUtility(bos, null);
form.add("search", search);
form.add("type", type);
form.add("action", "Search");
form.complete();
A URL object is created for the form's location plus the session ID. The rest of this proce-
dure is very similar to the list parsing example from recipes 7.1 and 7.2 in Chapter 7.
URL url = new URL(
"http://www.httprecipes.com/1/8/menunc.php?session="
+ session);
URLConnection http = url.openConnection();
http.setDoOutput(true);
OutputStream os = http.getOutputStream();