title: How to have Java application interact with a website
body: <p>I have a program that takes data from an excel file and manipulates it for the user. But in order to get updates to the excel file they need to be downloaded from a website. I originally tried using the robot class to navigate to the website, login with username and password, then navigate to the correct section of the website and find the button that says "download excel spreadsheet" and click it. But i understand that is a horrible way of doing it and it doesn't always work. 
      What is a better way i can do this so that my program can go to the website and navigate to the page i want and then download the data. I read about 'page scrapping' but i don't think that would allow me to do this. I really want to interact with the webpage not so much download the contents of it. Any help would be great.
  Thanks,
  Peter</p>