We Keep Coding

(Java) Is it possible to read Internet Explorer form data?

I'm just getting started with this process, but figured I'd ask if it is possible with only Java.
At work, we use an intranet for much of our work. I am developing an application that uses some of the information from those websites. However, we currently need to copy from IE and paste into my JavaFX application.
I was wondering if Java provides any sort of integration with the Windows API that would allow me to automatically pull that data from IE to my app.
For example, there is a web-based form with several textfields; I want to be able to capture the text that is written in them, programatically.
EDIT: I do not have access to the website code directly.

mmm i dont think it work that way,
you can make a java scraper , who is a program to get the code html of a certain page, but you cant get data from a form, because the clients are diferents.
maybe you can send from web client form the user/password to an app, but you cant make an intrusion from app to a form who is in a web page with content in the value of form fields

So you need to get form data from IE but you can't put code into the website. It sounds like a task for a plugin. Consider developing your own plugin or extension (probably in javascript) in IE.

Convert Web Page to PDF or Image

I need to convert a web page [which has not public access] to PDF or Image [preferably to PNG].
Web page contains set of charts and image. Most of the charts are populated through Ajax calls so there is a delay between page load and chart load.
I am looking answer for any of these questions:
1- I found set of snapshot api's but none of them support accessing my internal page. Since the web page I am trying to export is not public I need to be authenticated. Biggest problem is I cannot send request headers [such as session-id, cookie or other variables] along with these API's. It seems they don't support this kind of functionality.
2- I am not sure if I can do following: Login to my web page with HTTP client, add http headers, send get call and get HTML string. Then use one of the converters to convert it to PDF. What I am not sure is if it's possible to get proper PDF from the HTML string I got from http client since resources [css, js and etc] will be missing. I want my pdf/image looks exactly as it on the web site.
I really appreciate if you can help.
Thanks in advance,
ED

You're probably best of using wkhtmltopdf, which is a server-side tool and is easily installed.
There are two parameters you can use to wait for your Ajax to finish, try:
javascript-delay to influence the time the program waits for the JavaScript to finish
window-status to wait for a certain return code for the window
See the extensive manual for this program here
wkhtmltopdf generates a PDF and wkhtmltoimg generates an image, which is PNG (as you requested) by default.

Authentication is difficult because it involves security. Because the operation you are describing is unusual it is likely to result in all kinds of alarm bells going off. It is entirely possible to do but it is fraught, easy to get wrong and fragile in the face of security updates and code changes.
As such I'm going to suggest an alternate method which is one we often recommend for ABCpdf (on which I work). Yes we support standard authentication methods but the beauty of this approach is that it is robust and is applicable to other solutions (eg Java based) and novel authentication methods.
Typically you just want a PDF of the current page. The easiest way to do this is snaffle the HTML. The way you do this rather depends on your environment. For example under ASP.NET you can obtain the HTML of the current page using the HttpResponse.Filter property or by overriding the Render method of the page. The way you do it will depend on what you're coding in.
Then you need to save this HTML to a file and present it to your solution via a 'file://' protocol URL. Now obviously at this point any relative links will be broken but this is easily fixed by dropping in a BASE tag that references the place they are located.
Generally the types of resources referenced by an server-side page are static. So if you can create a tag that references the actual files rather than a web site, you will bypass any authentication for access to these resources.
That still leaves the AJAX based problems which are another can of worms. The render delay method is something we have supported for many years (from before AJAX was around) however it is not terribly reliable because you just don't know how long to wait.
Much better is a tighter link into the JavaScript via a callback you can use to determine if the page is loaded. I don't think ABCpdf is going to be appropriate for you since it is .NET but I would certainly encourage you to look for a Java based solution that uses this type of more sophisticated approach.

Accessing the same file

I have a situation where in I write to a text file programmatically using java and simultaneously I read from the same file using jQuery.
The problem I face is jQuery is unable to find the updated content whenever a content is written into the text file via java.
I have Googled a lot but the only results I find are for java and java processing and not for java and javascript (i.e A Client side and Server side)
I am not sure if this is even possible.
More about the question:
I write into the file the crawling results using java and I am trying to display the same using javascript (jQuery.post() method).
JAVA
A multi-threaded crawling program that crawls a website and does some functionality. I am trying to write some content into a text file using the same java program as and when the crawling happens. The content I write mostly are the details about which thread is getting invoked and what is the current link that is being crawled.
The reason I write this in the text file is I need to show the output in the UI so that people looking at the UI will understand what happens.
Writing happens perfectly as expected.
JAVASCRIPT (jQUERY)
This using the
jQuery.get or post ("sample.txt", function (result) {
$("#someID").html(result);
});
It reads from the text file normally but when java and javascript both are trying to access the file, It is the java that dominates leaving javascript behind thus jQuery is unable to fetch the updated content as and when it happens.
I guess this explanation is more than sufficient to make people understand what exactly my problem is !
On the whole, java and javascript try to access the same file at the same time. So there comes this issue.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance

I think the file is cached. Easiest thing is to request the file by different urls. Try something like "sample.txt?rnd="+Math.rand()

There can be synchronization problems and your data will be corrupted.

I have a question, is it must be done with Ajax? I think you are trying to figure out about
Ajax push and pull
This is not very easy to do and I wouldn't really recommend it. However, there is a better technology called websocket. So what you can do is, client can submit request to the server to write data into a file then server can send back updated content to the client. Moreover, this is much better than achieving the same objective through numerous amount of HTTP requests.
Additionally, if you want the crossbrowser compatibility, have a look at http://socket.io/

Thanks for all those who were trying to help me out.
I have finally come up with a solution. I, instead of using jquery post to directly read from file, am using another jsp file that reads the file contents and prints using out.println on screen, and after which I am using jQuery post to get the content written by that jsp file. Hence the synchronization problem is avoided.
Here is more about my explanation:
Earlier I had
java program -> Text File <- javascript (jQuery post) // Resulted in synchronization problem where in javascript was not able to access the updated content.
Now
java program -> Text file <- JSP file <- javascript (jQuery post) // Avoided the synchronization problem as that file is accessed by the same server side language. After that jQuery reads the content printed by JSP page.
After many changes, finally came up with one good working solution.
Thanks all.

Uploading huge files with PHP or any other language?

I have a problem I've been dealing with lately. My application asks its users to upload videos, to be shared with a private community. They are teaching videos, which are not always optimized for web quality to start with. The problem is, many of the videos are huge, way over the 50 megs I've seen in another question. In one case, a video was over a gig, and the only solution I had was to take the client's video from box.net, upload it to the video server via FTP, then associate it with the client's account by updating the database manually. Obviously, we don't want to deal with videos this way, we need it to all be handled automatically.
I've considered using either the box.net or dropbox API to facilitate large uploads, but would rather not go that way if I don't have to. We're using PHP for the main logic of the site, though I'm comfortable with many other languages, especially Python, but including Java, C++, or Perl. If I have to dedicate a whole server or server instance to handling the uploads, I will.
I'd rather do the client-side using native browser JavaScript, instead of Flash or other proprietary tech.
What is the final answer to uploading huge files though the web, by handling the server response in PHP or any other language?

It is possible to raise the limits in Apache and PHP to handle files of this size. The basic HTTP upload mechanism does not offer progressive information, however, so I would usually consider this acceptable only for LAN-type connections.
The normal alternative is to locate a Flash or Javascript uploader widget. These have the bonus that they can display progressive information and will integrate well with a PHP-based website.

For php http://php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.php
Note the ini files changes in the first comment.
Edit: Assuming you are running into timeout issues.

DataGrid In Java Struts Web Application

After scouring the web I have edited my question from the one below to what it is now.
Ok I seem to understand that I don't need all the capabilities of excel right now. I think i am satisfied having a data grid to display data. Basically i am working on Struts 2 and I wat my jsp page to have an excel like feel and hence looks like even a datagrid is sufficient. I came across This Technology
I am not sure whether I must go ahead and use it. Any other suggestions, alternatives are welcome
The older version of the question
"I have a java web application running on windows currently. I may host it in future in a Linux Server.
My application allows people to upload data. I want to display the data they have uploaded in an excel file and render it in a portion of my webpage.
How do I go about this ?"

Basically you would need to read the excel files, get the data in some kind of java objects, and then show it back to user as a normal HTML page with tables etc..
If you want to show the excel files in such a way that your users are also able to edit these then you need to look into javascript / ajax to make a UI as per your needs.
An easy and open source way of reading the uploaded excel files in java is via Apache POI. It is capable of reading .xls files as well as the newer OOXML .xlsx files.
http://poi.apache.org/spreadsheet/
They have very helpful examples which can get you started within 10 minutes..
http://poi.apache.org/spreadsheet/quick-guide.html
If you can allow data to go to another site, then you can use ZOHO. Their online Excel Editing is reasonably good and you don't really have to do anything much.

Maybe you can try http://www.jxcell.net:
It is a java spreadsheet component which allow you to edit your Excel via web page.