(Bash) [email protected] email availability checker

Question

So, I'm trying to set up a script in bash to send a request to aim.com's signup form, where it allows you to check if an ID is able to be made like so:

https://new.aol.com/productsweb/?promocode=827692&ncid=txtlnkuswebr00000073 - Choose a username

if $user = available then $continue; else show "Sorry, that username isn't available.".

Once that concept is down, I'll have it running through a list of a good 100 or so to see if any of these are able to be re-made.

If anyone can just point me in a starting direction, that would be awesome! Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

Looking at the referenced page, when you click the Check button, it sends a POST request to the following URL:

https://new.aol.com/productsweb/subflows/ScreenNameFlow/AjaxSNAction.do

With the following (required) parameter: s. This parameter needs to be set to the username you're testing for.

If the username exists, a "reloadEverything" message appears. If the username doesn't exist, a "toggleSNField" message appears.

If you want a real "Sorry, that username isn't available." message instead of the "reloadEverything", add two more parameters: l and f - and they both need to also be the username you're testing.

To accomplish this, you could iterate through your list of usernames and make a POST request with each and then just parse the response matching the above strings (the reloadEverything string is longer than that - so you could just do a substring match).