Tools such as WWW::Mechanize can automate form submissions and web interactions. If that is too much power for you, LWP::UserAgent and HTTP::Request can put together a form submission for you. In a pinch, CGI can even form a URL with form values. See the documentation of each one for examples.
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brian d foy <bdfoy@cpan.org>
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Those should work as long as the vendor page isn't using a bunch of javascript. Even if they are, you may still be able to hack something together, but javascript can be problematic for WWW::Mechanize. | [reply] |
Use of WWW:Mechanize, suggested above is certainly good advice but take heed of cbrandtbuffalo's note. Many, many webmasters try to offload some of the cost (server cpu cycles, bandwidth when a required field is not filled in, etc) of the form validation (or even untainting, which is spectacularly UNwise) onto the client, via javascript. So you need to be prepared for problems. And forgive me if this is excess-suspicion, but your words "..to populate an existing form of a third party vendor" may not mean what I fear they might, but if you're talking about using that vendor's bandwidth, etc, for your own purposes, you're talking "rude," to saying nothing of "actionable!"
In fact, in the US in this post 9/11 era, that might even be criminal.
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I have a vendor whose form I need to fill with data from another database that I have. The third party application has been licensed to me and it exists on my network. I need to fill this once every week so instead of getting the data and filling it manually, I wanted to automate the process. Instead of asking vendor's developers, I wanted to do it so it is useful to everyone in my group.
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Third Party Vendor's Form can call your script to get the data via providing 'next' or 'previous' submit buttons. If you are trying to submit the data to some Internet form, you can use WWW::Mechanize or similar mechanism.
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It's not entirely clear to me at this point what type of form you're looking to fill. Is it a web form, or some other form? Say a PDF form?
Please be more explicit.
(This type of problem is what B2B and XML are supposed to solve ...)
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If WWW::Mechanize isn't what you want, try Samie (Simple Automation Module For Internet Explorer) Or if the form isn't in a browser, (like a VB app) Perl::GUITest might do it for you, although it's pretty low level. | [reply] |