Search the Internet from VFP

[Scott24x7]

So thinking about modern day connectivity, and easy population of our database, I got the scatter brained idea to see if there is a way to, from within VFP, send a "first and last name" search from VFP directly to some site like LinkedIn or Facebook, or whatever the flavor of the day is, and if it finds a match (or it can ask you "is this the right guy, or provide a list of 20 or whatever), when you select it, it would automatically populate the URL into a field in the database, and maybe grab their profile photo automatically and pop that in too...

So the populating part I don't think is too troublesome, as I'm already doing that with drag and drop, but it would be nice at least to not have to go to linked in, type in names, and find them, if instead I can send search criteria directly to a website.

Has anyone done anything like that?

I suspect it's some kind of parameter passing to SHELLEXEC but not sure what....


Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[Mike Gagnon]

How far did you get with that so we don't duplicate efforts?

Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[Tore Bleken]

Your best option is to automate Internet Explorer. Unfortunate no other browser can be automated. This will give you some ideas:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=95946

http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~IEAutomationExample

https://www.west-wind.com/presentations/shellapi/shellapi.asp

You should also read this article:

https://www.west-wind.com/wconnect/weblog/ShowEntry.blog?id=912

For more info, try to Google "foxpro automating internet explorer

 

[Olaf Doschke]

For example LinkedIn offers this API:

https://developer-programs.linkedin.com/documents/people-search-api

If you take a look at some statements about the usage of the data even with an account for the API usage you'll see such social network platforms offer a public free search for persons at one hand, but on the other hand don't like to be used as dataabase source for profile matching or completion.

If you'd ever used google with some 100 automated searches you'd see how they go about mass usage and simply lock out your IP for a longer timeout. And that's just mildly going about such usage. So watch out, in many cases you already step on illegal ground scraping off such info via crawling a site. It might look unfair in comparison to what the social networks do themselves or what NSA does, but the data social networks collected one by one from their users is actually their propety in some ways and the data they need to protect by some laws in some other ways (data protection / protection of privacy).

And while I am not a lawyer and I understand your tool is about getting as much info from a batch of business cards some companies may have got during a fair or promotional tour and complete and extend that info via internet searches is what companies do anyway, you are stepping on problematic grounds. It's of course am obvious idea to lookup a person at LinkedIn or Facebook, but it should be less of a problem starting off at a website they may put on their business card and see, whether you find links to social networks there. If you don't make such links on your homepage you are either giving away an opportunity to be found and network or the site is a big corporation, where employees may have socialnetwork profiles, but rather seldom will put a complete list of employees on their sites and link them to networks.

Naybe take a look at

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/whoozy-person-search

http://www.programmableweb.com

itself is a good first source for finding APIs related to some topic.

I'm in a kind of similar situation about a totally different topic of an EAN/UPC product information database I lookout for use in a food related application. There are several free sites also offering APIs, but not with the infos I'd like to get. Maybe I'll end up at amazons ItemLookup method of the Product Advertising API.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Scott24x7]

Olaf,
Good points, but in our case, all we really want to do is automatically "get" the URL for the LinkedIn Profile (and maybe their photo) of contacts we already have asl well. We're not looking to just slurp all their data down, the intention is only to keep from having to manually enter data for contacts we already have. I don't believe that's any different from what you describe as the "social networks" we have collected our contact information already by hand (via business card, so it's 99% of the time people we've also physically met already).
I had a weird run-in with LinkedIn a few months back where something got laid on my keyboard, and some key was continually pressed and after about 10 seconds LinkedIn locked me out for over a week for it! And that was just random keyboard press (really annoying actually). I just wanted to be able to click a "check Linked In" button once we have someone in our database to add their linkedin profile URL to the contact record, rather than having to do it manually.

Mike,
I've gotten nowhere so far, as was waiting to hear back from you guys on advice. In the meantime I've been working to figure out how to parse the text data I have from my successful OCR implementation.


Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[Mike Gagnon]

>I've gotten nowhere so far, as was waiting to hear back from you guys on advice. In the meantime I've been working to figure out how to parse the text data I have from my successful OCR implementation.

That is what I figured. You are using this site to develop things for you without even investigating for solutions elsewhere or even this site. Most of the questions you asking have been answered on this site many times. I am surprised you have not been boot off this site way before this. You ask and ask, never actually answering anyone's question. This site survives on give and take. I have not looked into your other contributions in any other areas on this site, but for the Foxpro area you just ask questions on average 10 a day. Contribute too please.

Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[Scott24x7]

Mike,
I've been a long-time contributor to this site... I have investigated on many things, and I'm also trying to be "ahead of the curve".
I have done searches on the site for many things, but the search functions aren't great. I'm seeking wisdom and, but I'm building all my code... I'm rusty, and frustrated by my rustiness. I've been out of the "development" game for near 15 years. The world has changed a lot in that time as well.

I've just posted up all the findings on EZTWAIN and TRANSYM, and more of what I'm finding there.
If you don't want to answer my questions, I'm fine with that. But I don't like your accusation or suggestion I should be "booted from the community". I've been on Tek-Tips since near's its inception. The discussions have been invaluable, and my learn curve is greatly reduced. For that I'm eternally grateful to the participants. When you asked how far I'd gotten, I had been working 30 straight hours without sleep on this, when I answered I'd just woken up from 6 hours of sleep... so I hadn't had a chance to do anything with it between asking the question and seeing any of the responses. I've tried to answer a few questions here when I can add value... but in fairness most of the time, someone has already answered it. I'm not in the same timezone as any of you (I live in Japan... there aren't many Asian users on tek-tips).

The internet virtually didn't exist when I was working with Fox in the past. I asked this specific question because I've never tried to interact with the internet through VFP and was looking for insite, where to start, what to look out for.

Tek-Tips Reports: After joining Tek-Tips Forums on July 12, 2001, I've logged in 4,986 times. My last login was on Saturday, September 5, 2015. I've started 234 threads, posted 1,478 replies, and written 1 FAQs. Click here to see a breakdown of my posting by month and year. You can click on the table below to see my posts and/or FAQs written in any particular forum. I have saved 1 threads to My Thread Archive and 0 FAQs to My FAQ Archive so I can refer back to them easily.

I have my own forum on the site as well, which the site provided to me 4 years ago for my contributions to Tek-Tips...

10+ years ago when I was a highly active member of this forum, there were dozens of questions from users a day... In the MVP's list of this forum, you will note that I'm listed as #33. Site data also notes:
My stats for this forum are: Threads Replies Votes Received Votes Given
Microsoft: Visual FoxPro 152 794 - 52 119

Note that even what you quoted me on I mentioned I went on to work on other areas while waiting for an answer. I ask a question because I don't know... if you don't want to answer my questions, don't. But I don't appreciate at ALL your public accusation.


Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Scott,

>It may not be used for the purposes of database matching
That's first sentence and is about "just" matching and completing the data you already have. Anyway, good luck.

And Mike, it's true Scott has a profile leading back to 2001 and having 800 contributions in comparíson to 152 questions, that's not the problem. For now he's of course asking more, but has stated many times already, that he came back after a long pause of doing any VFP.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Scott24x7]

Thanks for the clarity Olaf... I guess I'll have to take my chances on that. I don't intend to do massive batch processing, just found that every time I added a contact (most of which I am already linked to on LinkedIn as well) I was manually going and finding their account, and then dragging and dropping the link onto their record... I guess they are ok if you do this manually but don't like it if you create a button for it. I can understand their "abuse" concern. So maybe I'll forget about it for now.


Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."