How HttpFox Saved Me A Ton Of Time
At work I was given the unusual task of automating a process to log-in to a partner’s website and submit data through several forms. I say it was an unusual task because our partners usually have integration points like web services that we communicate through, however, this partner provided no such mechanism. Up until now we’ve been keying in data to their site manually, but after the code I wrote gets deployed it should be a fully automated process.
That brings me to why I love HttpFox so much. It’s right up there with Firebug as one of my essential Firefox add-ons. With HttpFox I was able to easily capture all the HTTP traffic from my browser to the site and back. I could see each post variable and name as raw data or formatted. Sure there are other tools that could do that, but none that make it so easy.
I was then able to essentially copy and paste the form data from HttpFox into the application I wrote which use a HttpWebRequest to perform the same action that the browser does. In just three hours I was able to reverse all the relevant portions of our partner’s site, create a XML file describing the form data to use as input, and them automatically submit it.