Sending an OWA logon form from Java

Question

I am interested in a way to programmatically log into OWA (Microsoft Outlook Web Access - a web-based email client) from Java code and retrieve nothing more than the inbox unread count -- I can read this number from the inbox web page's HTML source - but the problem is getting there - logging in.

Essentially, from looking at the HTML source of the OWA logon page, I can see that there is an HTML form element:

<form action="owaauth.dll" method="POST" name="logonForm" autocomplete="off"> 

that gets submitted by a button element within it:

<input type="submit" class="btn" value="Log On" onclick="clkLgn()"> 

From investigating the clkLgn() script, I find that it sends a cookie to the document so it may not be crucial:

function clkLgn()
{
    if(gbid("rdoPrvt").checked)
    {
        var oD=new Date();
        oD.setTime(oD.getTime()+2*7*24*60*60*1000);
        var sA="acc="+(gbid("chkBsc").checked?1:0);
        var sL="lgn="+gbid("username").value;
        document.cookie="logondata="+sA+"&"+sL+";expires="+oD.toUTCString();
    }
}

Basically, how can I send this form? The following code is my attempt at the problem, I can make the HTTP connection - but I can't seem to be able to POST the correct HTTP request.

                URL urlObject = new URL(url);

                HttpURLConnection hConnection = (HttpURLConnection)urlObject.openConnection();
                HttpURLConnection.setFollowRedirects(true);
                hConnection.setDoOutput(true);
                hConnection.setRequestMethod("POST");

                PrintStream ps = new PrintStream(hConnection.getOutputStream());

                ps.print("username="+username+"&password="+password);
                ps.close();


                hConnection.connect();

                if( HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK == hConnection.getResponseCode() )
                {
                    InputStream is = hConnection.getInputStream();
                    OutputStream os = new FileOutputStream("output.html");
                    int data;
                    while((data=is.read()) != -1)
                    {
                      os.write(data);
                    }
                    is.close();
                    os.close();
                    hConnection.disconnect();
                }

It just keeps returning the same logon HTML page.

Answer 1

That JavaScript does certainly an important thing: it adds a cookie to the document. A decent HTTP client is required to send all valid cookies along the headers on every HTTP request. You should do the same programmatically. You can add headers using URLConnection#setRequestProperty().

Further, there are several things to take into account as well when submitting forms programmatically: you should not skip any hidden input fields (input type="hidden"), those might be of relevance. You should also send the name=value pair of the submit button you'd like to press programmatically along as request parameter. Finally, you should not be using & to concatenate parameter pairs, but &.

Note that I don't guarantee that it will finally work, that OWA thing might have some other prevention against bots, but it should solve the as far spotted problems.

See also:

• How to use URLConnection?

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By the way, have you considered just connecting it using a SMTP/IMAP API like JavaMail?