lordaaronj

I know you guys are always eager to help, and are so good at it, so here's my problem.

At work, we have access to a website with our customers information on it. It's a pain to get to (log in, click a few menus, type in their phone number, etc)

We are wanting to send out thank you cards to most of the customers based on how recently they have shopped with us (one of the pieces of information we can glean from this website), but it's a real pain to type in so many numbers and then have to retype/copy paste the information we need into another file that we can make our cards from. Is there a way to write some type of script to be able to go into a website, put in the appropriate information in the right text boxes, and then be able to copy certain information from other text boxes into a text file? I know I'm being very vague, but I'm not sure how to go about this. If it could be done the way I'm thinking of, it would save alot of sore eyeballs and hours of payroll.

Thanks all!
Aaron

OceanCity

Hi Aaron,
I assume that you don't have access to the actual code on the web server and that you want to send your own form post with your data.

If you view the web page in your PC's browser and click the "View Source" menu selection, you will see the page's HTML code. Scroll down and find the field where you will enter the "appropriate information". Your task is to re-create this html with your "appropriate information" already added and then display it in your browser. You can then click the form's button to send the page to the server. You must do this over and over - once for each form post. The easiest way of doing this is by using a RAD program such as VisualBasic or Delphi, but it's not a trival job and unless you have thousands of these to send probably won't be worth the effort. If you really wanted to get fancy you could even intercept the returned web page and collect the information you need saving you the final cut and paste effort.

Not a trival job and you probably might consider the "sore eyeballs" the better solution.

Regards

VisualBasic Articles:
http://www.findingfacts.com/L3/L3_2_28_33.php
Delphi Articles:
http://www.findingfacts.com/L3/L3_2_28_32.php

lordaaronj

After researching it some, it looks like it's going to be a beast. We had a few hundred addresses to collect, and letters to send out a month, best to make some lackey do it I guess ;-)
OceanCity, thanks for telling me the basics of what I would have to do. I actually had some personal projects that I wanted done where that information would be helpful.
Later!
Aaron