So this is a bit of a tricky problem I'm having and I'm starting to think that it's not easily possible.
There's a website that has a level of security that I am trying to automatically download files from(it's a banking site). The website will not save user info when you log in, and after logging in you have to verify a certificate in your browser to receive your reports. Once you've verified the browser with the certificate and are logged in, however, you are free to open up the reports(pdf files) by directly typing in the link to them.
For other sites, I would do something like:
using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
client.DownloadFile(PDFFileReportWebsite,#LocalLocationToStoreFile);
}
But for this site, I have no idea what to do(the above doesn't work). Is there a way to have code like above run from within the browser itself after I've logged in and verified my certificate?
One solution I thought of that would be overkill(nevermind just gross/hacky), and I can't imagine the best option, would be to make a webbrowser app in C# and run the code on that browser after logging in.
EDIT:
ProcessStartInfo pi = new ProcessStartInfo(WebAddressOfPdfFileINeed);
Process.Start(pi);
correctly opens up the webbrowser(chrome since its my default) to the file I need(If I'm already logged in and verified my cert). Is there a way to force chrome to save this file or print it as text or a pdf?
Related
I have an application that allows the user to upload a file (saving it to in a folder located in the wwwroot of the ASPNETCORE application). From here they can make edits to it and then they can choose to export the file as a csv/ xml/ xlsx which downloads the file to the user's 'downloads' folder.
While debugging in Visual Studio this all works fine however when I publish and deploy the application to IIS I am getting the exception
Error saving file C:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Downloads(FILE NAME)
Could not find part of the path C:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Downloads(FILE NAME)
This is the current way I am getting the downloads folder:
FileInfo file = new FileInfo(Path.Combine(Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(#"%USERPROFILE%\Downloads"), data.Filename + "." + data.FileType));
However I have also tried the solution that Hans Passant has answered to a similar question here. Both solutions worjk fine while debugging locally however as soon as I publish them, this one produces the exception:
Value cannot be null. Parameter name: path1
Which I presume is thrown at this point here when I try and save the file to the user's download folder.
using (var package = new ExcelPackage(file))
{
var workSheet = package.Workbook.Worksheets.Add("ExportSheet");
workSheet.Cells.LoadFromCollection(exports, true);
package.Save();
}
I don't really know how I would be able to reproduce these exceptions seeing as locally using Visual Studio it all works fine.
Has anyone else came across this issue while trying to download a file?
UPDATE: When the application is running on IIS, it seems to be using that as the user profile instead of the actually user, so when it tries to navigate to the Downloads folder, it cannot find it. How can I force it to use the user's profile?
LoadUserProfile is already set to True.
Web applications have no knowledge of the end-user's computer's filesystem!
So using Environment.GetFolderPath or Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables in server side code will only reveal the server-side user (i.e. the Windows Service Identity)'s profile directories which is completely separate and distinct from your web-application's actual browser-based users OS user profile.
As a simple thought-experiment: consider a user running a weird alien web-browser on an even more alien operating system (say, iBrowse for the Amiga!) - the concept of a Windows-shell "Downloads" directory just doesn't exist, and yet here they are, browsing your website. What do you expect your code would do in this situation?
To "download" a file to a user, your server-side web-application should serve the raw bytes of the generated file (e.g. using HttpResponse.TransmitFile) with the Content-Disposition: header to provide a hint to the user's browser that they should save the file rather than try to open it in the browser.
I'm trying to use Selenium WebDriver to automatically login in to a site with a user-name and password. I've done my research and I don't believe this feature is supported by WebDriver, so I need to find another way. The site I'm trying to automate logging into is located here.
When prompted to login a popup window comes up that doesn't seem to be part of the browser. I'm using Firefox and Chrome. It seems Windows API may be required? I already tried passing the credentials in the URL but that didn't work. Also tried sendkeys, but received a Windows exception that the application was not accepting Windows messages. I also tried switching the current handle using driver.windowhandles but the popup doesn't seem to be a new handle.
Does anybody have any ideas? I'm kinda stuck. The preliminary code to get to the popup window is:
IWebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://www.portal.adp.com");
string currentWindow = driver.CurrentWindowHandle;
IWebElement userLogin = driver.FindElement(By.Id("employee"));
userLogin.Click();
The popup you are seeing is prompted by web server and is a authentication prompt. Selenium doesn't support this operation.
One of the way to handle this limitation is to pass user and password in the url like like below:
http://user:password#example.com
More info available here : http://aleetesting.blogspot.in/2011/10/selenium-webdriver-tips.html
I wanted my answer out there because I think I've solved it. This answer does not require passing the credentials through the URL (for those of you that are unable to like me). It also does not require any custom Firefox Profiles or extensions to be installed or included with the solution or installed onto the browser eliminating cross-machine compatibility issues.
The issue with me was that the authentication could not be completed via passing the credentials through the URL because the login was behind a proxy.
So, I turned to windows automation toolkits and found AutoIT. Using AutoIT and Selenium, you can login automatically by sending the username and password to the windows dialog that appears. Here's how (note the steps below are for c#:
1 - Download AutoIT from http://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/downloads/
2 - Add the autoit .dll to your project references.
Right click on references, select Add Reference. Next click the browse button and browse to the dll location (most default installations it will be c:\Program Files (x86)\AutoIt3\AutoItX\AutoItX3.dll), and add to project.
3 - use AutoIT and Selenium like this (assuming your web driver is already initialized):
//Initialize AutoIT
var AutoIT = new AutoItX3();
//Set Selenium page load timeout to 2 seconds so it doesn't wait forever
Driver.Manage().Timeouts().SetPageLoadTimeout(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2));
//Ingore the error
try
{
Driver.Url = url;
}
catch
{
return;
}
//Wait for the authentication window to appear, then send username and password
AutoIT.WinWait("Authentication Required");
AutoIT.WinActivate("Authentication Required");
AutoIT.Send("username");
AutoIT.Send("{TAB}");
AutoIt.Send("password");
AutoIT.Send("{ENTER}");
//Return Selenium page timeout to infinity again
Driver.Manage().Timeouts().SetPageLoadTimeout(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(-1));
Anyway, that's it, and it works like a charm :)
Also note that there are some special characters that need to be escaped in AutoIT using the sequence "{x}". For example, if your password is "!tRocks", you'd need to pass it into AutoIT as "{!}tRocks".
Happy automating.
FirefoxProfile profile = new FirefoxProfile();
profile.SetPreference("network.http.phishy-userpass-length", 255);
profile.SetPreference("network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris", hostname);
Driver = new FirefoxDriver(profile);
hostname is your URL (example.com) then try to
Driver.Navigate().GoToUrl(http://user:password#example.com);
I just got done working on a prototype project that is supposed to handle exactly this kind of situation.
It utilizes BrowserMob, a popular open source proxy, to perform the authentication.
SeleniumBasicAuthWrapper Hope it helps! It is still a work in progress, but hopefully we'll get any kinks or defects ironed out in the near future.
I'm trying to transfer a file (word document) from my server to the client
I'm using this :
Response.TransmitFile(path);
Response.End();
In IE when I click open of the download popup, everything is ok and word open with my document.
The problem is when I click the save button in word, it pop me a security/connection popup. I have to give a username/password for mysite.com
That is normal behaviour since Word handles files opened via browser differently - it tries to verify whether they are "WebDAV-accessible" and uses some MS-specific extensions in doing so... that in turn doesn't use your current browser session but tries/needs to establish a new which in turn leads to Word askting you for credentials.
IF you want to just download it locally you could by using a content-disposition header - this way Word sees it as a local file and tries to save it locally upon "Word save button press".
IF you really want it to be saved back to your site it gets a bit tricky... although as you are running on IIS you might be able to implement something in combination with the IIS-built-in WebDAV functionality...
EDIT - as per comments:
For how to use content-disposition http header see for example http://www.jtricks.com/bits/content_disposition.html
Is there a way I could change the download folder of the default web browser using c#.
Concurring with other's comments, you can only do it in a desktop app if you have the right permissions.
Here's some sample code to find out the default browser of the system (from this post):
private string getDefaultBrowser()
{
string browser = string.Empty;
RegistryKey key = null;
try
{
key = Registry.ClassesRoot.OpenSubKey(#"HTTP\shell\open\command", false);
//trim off quotes
browser = key.GetValue(null).ToString().ToLower().Replace("\"", "");
if (!browser.EndsWith("exe"))
{
//get rid of everything after the ".exe"
browser = browser.Substring(0, browser.LastIndexOf(".exe")+4);
}
}
finally
{
if (key != null) key.Close();
}
return browser;
}
However, things get tricky from here. Different browsers have different ways of saving the default location.
E.g.,
IE may store it in registry (usually under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Internet Explorer)
FF stores it in prefs.js in Profile folder (checkout this post to get to it via code)
Not sure about Chrome and Safari
but you get the idea.
Not sure what your end goal is, but from a UX standpoint, I think the best thing to do would be to ask user to specify the Download directory (in other words, you expose a Setting in your App for the default download location).
To expand on Ash's comment - if you're within a web app, no. If you're a desktop app, and you have sufficient permissions (i.e. running as Administrator), probably. But you'd need to find the default browser (from the registry presumably) and know how to set the download folder for each popular browser, or every browser you want to work with.
Where are you trying to do this from? If you mean "someone hits our website and ...", the answer is no, as anything you run is in a security context. You can certainly suggest the user changes the folder, but you are stuck.
Assuming you are not a web application, you have options. The main user download directory is located at X under the key {374DE290-123F-4565-9164-39C4925E467B}. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. You can learn how to hack the registry programatically here. But, the user can specify a specific folder in the browser, as well. This means you have to know what browser the user is using and hack it, or you can attempt to hack all.
The bad news is the app, running (most likely) in the user context, may not have administrator rights and be able to whack the registry keys to change the folder.
I have written an ASP.NET web page with C# behind that runs an existing vb script.
The idea is that the user uploads an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) using the web page, the C# does a few basic checks on the file (file type, file name etc) then saves the .xls to a network location.
The C# then passes the network path of the .xls to the vb script, which gets the required information from the .xls to create a .csv file.
Finally the .csv is passed into a stored procedure and uploaded to a database table.
The problem is that all this runs perfectly when I run the webpage locally on my machine. However when I upload the page to the webserver it does not seem to execute the vb script; instead it just sits there waiting for the script to exit.
Some quick info:
Excel is installed on the web server
The website is set to execute scripts and executables
The script is currently set to 'run as' my personal domain login (this has to change) which has admin on the web server
If I run the script on the webserver using the cmd prompt it works
I'd really appreciate any ideas on what might be going wrong... seriously, I'm pulling my hair out over this one and will consider any idea, no matter how crazy... but, and it's a big one, despite the fact that that there are many other ways of achieving the same result, I'm afraid that for a number of reasons this is what I have to work with :)
Edit
Here is how I call the script
try
{
System.Security.SecureString password = new System.Security.SecureString();
string uspw = "mypassword";
foreach (char c in uspw)
{
password.AppendChar(c);
}
Process scriptProc = new Process();
scriptProc.StartInfo.FileName = #"cscript";
scriptProc.StartInfo.Arguments = scriptPath + " //Nologo " + uploadPath + xlsFileName;
scriptProc.StartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Minimized;
scriptProc.StartInfo.UserName = "myusername";
scriptProc.StartInfo.Password = password;
scriptProc.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
scriptProc.Start();
scriptProc.WaitForExit();
scriptProc.Close();
}
catch...
All of the file paths are relative.
The code seems to fail when the script is called. You can clearly see the page waiting for the script to finish. However if you watch the task manager on the web server neither cscript or excel start to run.
I've also stuck a message box right at the start of the script which does not get displayed
Edit 2
It turns out that cscript is running, I just needed to tick the 'All Users' check box in the task manager... I'm still none the wiser though!
Thanks so much in advance
Sounds like you are using automation to control the Excel application itself?
Some quick info:
Excel is installed on the web server
That is generally a bad idea, because the Excel application is not an application that is intended to be automated by a server. Thing might hang because the application is waiting for user input in a dialog somewhere. And it's not scalable for handling operations from multiple users simultaneously.
If the final goal is to extract the data from the excel file and put it in an sql server, I would rather suggest that you use the Jet OLEDB provider to retrieve the data from the excel file, either from your web application, and letting that feed the data into sql server, or let the sql server do it directly. If there is a lot of data in the excel file, the latter might be the best choice
Without seeing the code this is a blind guess - I suggest you check how you are specifying the path to the vb script - make sure you are not using an absolute path, and that the file is in the same location relative to the C# page on the server as it is on your machine.