Drive a webpage?

[waynebrady]

Is there a way, using the ActiveX Browser in VFP7, to "drive" a webpage that I have no authority over? If I know the the field name or button name on a web page, is it possible to populate a webpage field and click a webpage's button? I'm trying to automate a repetative process of looking up an order status screen for many "order numbers" in my local VFP table at my vendors site.
In looking at the PEMs, I don't have any good documentation on the PEMs for the ActiveX browser object. If anyone knows where to get more detail, that would be helpful.

Thanks,


Wayne Brady

 

[wgcs]

Yup, it's possible.

I'm not sure how much you know about HTML/HTTP,etc, but what you're talking about has been described as "Screen scraped web services"... essentially making VFP emulate a browser and access the web pages "scraping" the data off of them.

There are two different ways of getting a web page: GET and POST. GET is simpler to "drive", since all form info is stored in the URL. POST is a little harder, but not impossible.

See faq184-4359 for how to GET or POST form data.
See faq184-3019 for how to GET a web page.
See forum184 faqs, section "internet" for other internet tricks in vfp.

 

[flintstone42]

West Wind has there wwip class that
give a frame work for this.
A little lot eaiser

DO wwhttp
oHTTP = CREATEOBJECT("wwHTTP")
oHTTP.HTTPConnect("zip4.usps.com/zip4")
*** Connect to the server
*oHTTP.HTTPConnect("

http://www.usps.com")

*oHTTP.HTTPConnect("

http://www.satorisoftware.com/US/AddressCheck")

*oHTTP.HTTPConnect("

http://www.west-wind.com")

*** Let's post some data TO the server

oHTTP.AddPostKey("Selection","1")
oHTTP.AddPostKey("urbanization","")
oHTTP.AddPostKey("firm","")
oHTTP.AddPostKey("address1",addr12)
oHTTP.AddPostKey("address2","")
oHTTP.AddPostKey("city",city1)
oHTTP.AddPostKey("state",state1)
oHTTP.AddPostKey("zipcode",zipcode1)
oHTTP.AddPostKey("submit","")

*** Initialize the variables that will be filled by HTTPGetEx
lcHTML="" && Data buffer
lnText=0 && Size of the output to return - 0 means autosize
*** Send the POST data and retrieve HTTP result
lnResult =oHTTP.HTTPGetEx("/zip4_responseA.jsp",@lcHTML,@lnText)