Member Avatar for mrbillbenson

Wikipedia has most movies well sussed; I would like to take an excel list of movies, call up wiki page using

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("http://www.wikipedia.org/")
System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.Send("Moonraker")
System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.Send("{Enter}")

, use sendkeys to enter the name of the movie from the excel list into Wiki's default search text field and {Enter} to launch. What I am finding is that none of what I send in SendKeys is getting into the default text field. So sumthins wrong.

First post here, hope someone helps - if ya can. Basically my long term goal is to collect a number of successful wiki kits for movie explanations based on the movie name only, then these can be made into hyperlinks to wiki with the movie name as the label.

Thanks. I am sleep deprived, may not be too coherent, lots meds trying to solve no-sleep.

Edited by Reverend Jim because: Fixed formatting
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Member Avatar for sknake

Use HttpWebRequest and fill out the form fields. You're going about this task the wrong way :)

You want a 'scraper' that downloads content.

Member Avatar for mrbillbenson

I am pretty new to VB, so it will take me a little while to try the method you proposed but I am not sure what you mean by wanting a scraper.

My intent is to go first to WIKI with some pre-defined text to search for (the results may or may not contain the movie I am looking for, so I think I have to use some judgment about which link is the best to decide on - may have to click on and visually examine more than one item in the search result). I just want SendKeys or equivalent to populate the search field and launch the search for me. I might then manually tab up to the url (since user interaction has to occur) then Ctrl-C to copy the url, Alt-Tab back to the program and look for some code which will make a hyperlink out of the EXcel cell contents (already in memory) and whatever now resides in the Buffer (if I can get at that).

Wrong way, perhaps - but there is this manual step in the middle involving judgment that is making me walk through it this way. I don't know in advance what url will have the desired info. If I did, then there would be nothing to search for in the first place.

Thanks for your guidance.

Member Avatar for samir_ibrahim

What type of movie info you are searching exactly? since you decide to search for movie name why don't you check www.imdb.com which will give you only movie name to look at despite wikipedia which will give a long list of non movie name.

Member Avatar for mrbillbenson

Hi, thanks for answering Samir. The reason is when I go to http://www.wikipedia.com I am immediately in a search text box field on page load. When I go to imdb, I have to tab several times (it may change over time also) before I get to a search field. And, I am trying to make the sendkeys (to the control on the page) automatic.

Which I have no idea how to do. I think I am out of my league, but interested to learn how it is done.

Thanks.

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