Screen scraper converting special characters to meta characters when not required
We are licensed users of Screen Scraper Enterptise edition and facing the following issue.
We are trying to scrap response from a website, which uses RIP SESSION as a parameter.
On this website the ripsession needs to be posted as
{[*!1D1A020B050304731D3C3D31617C041E28360020373B2D3A033A2131681B1102001216030D02040A06016F691120283F3A3606243629243A06176F71747C797D767660017462122B3C203B2A2A0705737E626673727D767F7E61!*]}
What is happening is Screen Scraper tool is convertion the special characters in the above content to meta characters
as shown below. This is observed in the logs when screen scraper runs
%7B%5B*%211D1A020B050304731D3C3D31617C041E28360020373B2D3A033A2131681B1102001216030D02040A06016F691120283F3A3606243629243A06176F71747C797D767660017462122B3C203B2A2A0705737E626673727D767F7E61%21*%5D%7D
Observe the first 4 characters at the start and the last 4 characters at the end being replaced by
meta characters. The above causes no response to be returned from the website.
Could someone kindly help with the issue stated above. Regards- Diptirmaya
Hi Diptirmaya, My guess is
Hi Diptirmaya,
My guess is that you're extracting this value from a page, then embedding it as a POST parameter in a subsequent scrapeable file. For example, under the "Value" column of the POST parameter you might be embedding the session variable with something like:
~#RIP_SESSION#~
Any values that are found in the "Value" field of a POST parameter will be automatically URL-encoded, which is how POST parameters are typically sent. In some uncommon cases you may actually need to send the POST payload as an XML document, or something similar. In these cases, you'll want to use the scrapeableFile.setRequestEntity method (http://community.screen-scraper.com/API/setRequestEntity), which allows you to set the POST payload as a raw string, and will cause it not to be URL-encoded.
Hopefully this answers the question. If not, feel free to write back.
Kind regards,
Todd
Issue w.r.t Get Parameters
Hi Todd
Appreciate your response above. It helped us resolve posting parameters without special
characters being encoded.
One more issue w.r.t get parameters in a url.
Referring to this posting titled
url variables automatically hex encoding - how can i get it to stop?
We have to send a parameter to a website in the following format
somewebsite.com/someaction.do?RIPSESSION={[*!1D1A020B050
I add this parameter to the url on the properties tab,
but in the logs i am observing it gets converted to
somewebsite.com/someaction.do?RIPSESSION=%7B%5B*!1D1A020B050,
Is there any way to avoid the encoding of {[ charatcers as it is causing a no response
returned from the website.
Appreciate your response and support- Dipti
diptirmaya, Please see Todd's
diptirmaya,
Please see Todd's reply to your other posting here.
http://community.screen-scraper.com/node/1372#comment-2693
-Scott