Load website and fill form from the command line

Posted by Martin Scharrer on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Martin Scharrer
Published on 2011-03-19T22:05:34Z Indexed on 2011/03/20 0:12 UTC
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Filed under:

shell

|

automation

|

webforms

Using the Linux command line (Bash shell) I like to load a specific website in my browser (normally Firefox, but other one would be ok as well as long it runs under Linux) and fill a pre-defined form with some data. Actually, this should run from a Makefile. Most of the form data is static and will be stored as variables in the Makefile, just some fields are to be filled manually before manually sending the form.

I know how to load the website in question from the command line using:

firefox <URL>

But there seems no possibility to fill the form automatically with variables given on the command line. Is there a plugin, executable or JavaScript which allows me to do this? Any suggestions and hints are welcome. I don't mind coding some JavaScript.

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