How to programmatically submit a POST form using IronPython

Sometimes you may want to download a web page that is a result of submitting a form that uses a POST method. The code below shows how to do that using IronPython.

1. prepare a request object, that is created for a given URI.
2. write the PARAMETERS string to the request stream.
3. retrieve the response and read from its stream.

URI = 'http://www.example.com'
PARAMETERS="lang=en&field1=1"

from System.Net import WebRequest
request = WebRequest.Create(URI)
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
request.Method = "POST"

from System.Text import Encoding
bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(PARAMETERS)
request.ContentLength = bytes.Length
reqStream = request.GetRequestStream()
reqStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)
reqStream.Close()

response = request.GetResponse()
from System.IO import StreamReader
result = StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd()
print result

How to download a web page using IronPython

Downloading a web page is a common programming task. Here are two snippets of code that show how to do it with IronPython. The code was tested on Windows and Mac (with Mono).

Using the WebClient class

from System.Net import WebClient
dataStream = WebClient().OpenRead('http://google.com')
from System.IO import StreamReader
reader = StreamReader(dataStream)
result = reader.ReadToEnd()
print result

Using the WebRequest and WebResponse classes

from System.Net import WebRequest
request = WebRequest.Create("http://google.com")
response = request.GetResponse()
responseStream = response.GetResponseStream()
from System.IO import StreamReader
result = StreamReader(responseStream).ReadToEnd()
print result