Thread: How can I access the feilds in java applet?

Hello,

I am a new poster here. I really don't have much experience with Java, but I have encountered a problem and it looks like I'm going to need to familiarize myself with it quickly.

Basically my question is how I could access the fields in a Java applet, more specifically to automatically input values? Could it be done through DOM or some other way?

To provide a little more background on my problem, I am currently working on a program using VB.NET which will have an embedded browser that will direct the user to a Federal regulatory agency. Currently our HQ employees are accessing this site and manually typing a large number of values to submit to the agency. My hope is to automate this process with my program. The user will be able to select excel files through the winform and it will automatically pull the data from the files and populate the fields in the online form. .NET makes it very easy to access fields and assign values in general HTML so it looked like this project would be very simple. But unfortunately I discovered that the specific forms to submit our data are embedded within a Java applet, something I know very little about. So this complicates things a bit, but I'm hoping that someone may have some experience with this and could provide some sort of way to access/manipulate fields in a Java applet.

If any more information is needed I'd be happy to provide it!

Thanks,
Michael

Originally Posted by Norm

Are you writing a java class that will be part of a program that has a java applet class in it?

If not, I don't know of an easy way for one program to get values being displayed by another program.

If you can change the applet code there used to be ways for javascript and the java code in an applet to call each others methods.

As of now I have done nothing, I tried (unsuccessfully) to get the field ID's in order to see if I could perhaps still use my "Setattribute" command. But I really don't know much about Java.

And I don't belive that I can alter the applet code, this is an applet that's embedded within a federal agency website. I was just hoping to assign values to the fields.

That's what I was afraid of... I've considered a robot of some sort to move through but I don't think it would be worth it at that point.

I was just really hoping that there was some way to modify the attribute of a field like you can do so easily within HTML. Otherwise I may just have to scrap the project unless you could think of any other way that could make my goal acheivable.

I have been able to obtain the Java applet code, by having this could I now somehow enter data into the applet fields?

Yes that is what I mean by field, essentially multiple textboxes for data input...

Do you how I would go about getting a reference to the instance in the textfield? Unfortunately I do not know much about Java, I came into this project thinking I would be populating simple html fields which is easy through .NET.

And yes, it is loaded by a browser within an html page. I could gladly provide the html code that loads the applet and any of the applet code if it would help. Right now the data is input manually by being typed into each textfield.

Well my plan was never to change the applet code, I was just wondering if there's any way to expose the fields in order to automate an input process.

Although this is clearly quite different from html, I was thinking along the lines of how you'd enter data into a html field by setting the value attribute to your input string.

But if there's no simple way to do this I think I'll just go with a robot design that tabs through the textboxes and simulates the data entry. I was just thinking it would be more robust to address the fields directly, if this was even possible...

Well my plan was never to change the applet code, I was just wondering if there's any way to expose the fields in order to automate an input process.

Although this is clearly quite different from html, I was thinking along the lines of how you'd enter data into a html field by setting the value attribute to your input string.

But if there's no simple way to do this I think I'll just go with a robot design that tabs through the textboxes and simulates the data entry. I was just thinking it would be more robust to address the fields directly, if this was even possible...

The code is being executed within a Winform application that pulls the desired data from an excel spreadsheet and outputs it to the applet..

And yes, if I incorporate some sort of robot function I'm aware it's external. That's just my backup plan if I can't address the fields in the applet.

That would be ideal, and this could be incorporated into a winform based on the .NET framework?

Thanks, I'll do some investigating and tinkering and see what I can do..