VB WebBrowser click button - html

Question

On this web page: https://www.youtube.com/upload_defaults
I would like to call a function and then click the "Save" button in the upper right corner.
There is no ID or Name. How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can use the distinct CSS class of the button: account-save-button
In VB.NET, use HtmlDocument.GetElementsByTagName like this:
Private Sub ClickSaveButton()
If (WebBrowser1.Document IsNot Nothing) Then
Dim Elems As HtmlElementCollection
Dim WebOC as WebBrowser = WebBrowser1
Elems = WebOC.Document.GetElementsByTagName("BUTTON")
For Each elem As HtmlElement In Elems
Dim CssClass As String = elem.GetAttribute("classname")
If ((CssClass IsNot Nothing) And (CssClass.Length <> 0)) Then
If CssClass.ToLower().Contains("account-save-button") Then
elem.InvokeMember("click");
Exit For
End If
End If
Next
End If
End Sub
To verify it with just a web browser, try this from your browser's developer console; it works because youtube uses jQuery:
$(".account-save-button").click();
Or pure javascript: document.getElementsByClassName('account-save-button')[0].click();
For reference, here is the button's markup:
<button class="yt-uix-button yt-uix-button-size-default yt-uix-button-primary account-save-button account-action-button" type="submit" onclick=";return true;"><span class="yt-uix-button-content">Save</span></button>
Other thoughts:
This is basically screen scraping, which can lead to brittle applications when the page changes, etc.
Google may already have a web service API for what you are trying to accomplish.. but that's a good question:
What exactly are you trying to accomplish? What is the context? We may be able to suggest a better alternate solution.
Update:
I checked the Youtube API Reference, but I don't see anything for setting preferences for upload defaults.