[TriLUG] Web Form Data

[Owen Berry]

If you can write Perl code, take a look at LWP::UserAgent,
HTML::TreeBuilder and HTTP::Cookies (if you need cookies) for it to
work.  I've used this to bulk retrieve information off a website (with
permission) using forms, cookies etc.

Also, this article about WWW::Mechanize might interest you:

http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2003/01/22/mechanize.html

Owen

On Mon, Oct 16, 2006 at 10:34:47AM -0400, Mark Freeze wrote:
> I am hoping someone can help me solve an issue we are having at work.
> 
> In the course of a day, we have literally hundreds of account numbers
> we look up on one of our vendors websites.  We are usually just
> looking for a particular status code.  This process takes a huge
> amount of time as the account numbers have to be entered one by one.
> 
> What I am looking to do is to automate this process.  I'd like to
> create a text file of account numbers on my local system, log into the
> website, and then have a script or something march through the account
> numbers automatically, entering them on the vendor's form, retrieve
> the results, and place them into another text file on the local
> system.
> 
> I have seen several companies on the internet that sell software to do
> this, but I'd really like to write it myself.   Can someone kick me in
> the right direction of how to get started on this project?
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark.