Re: Extract data from website and transfer it to Outlook

If my boss expected me to manually enter 3K addresses into a system, the first thing I'd do is quit. Really.

Certainly Perl is a great tool for just this sort of thing. But if the information you're trying to access is already on some website, it's probably stored in a database. If you can get someone to give you an extract of this database, you've eliminated most of your work already. All that would be left to do is import the data into Outlook. Is this a possibility you've looked into?

If that's not feasible, I would look at some tutorials, grab a copy of [id://merlyn]'s Learning Perl and cobble something together with the help of:

WWW-Mechanize
Open SSL (if the website is using SSL)
HTML-TableParser
The vCard module jdporter suggested

Hope this helps.

Comment on Re: Extract data from website and transfer it to Outlook

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Re^2: Extract data from website and transfer it to Outlook by phydeauxarff (Priest) on Apr 27, 2006 at 21:33 UTC
As I was reading this I was just about to post similar to your comment concerning the expectation of the OP's employer that they perform this function of course, before I quit I would have asked for a contractor to write the code to accomplish the task ah..the joys of having a pointy headed manager	[reply]
Re^3: Extract data from website and transfer it to Outlook by Paintermonkey (Novice) on Apr 27, 2006 at 23:29 UTC
Thanks guys! You have all been really helpful and really nice! I like this site so much I've taken the good advice and registered myself. I've been reading up on WWW::Mechanize. Sadly, the website in question IS in Javascript. I haven't given up yet. I'm going to spend some more time looking up as much info as I can. I also have acquired a .pdf version of the web data. I'm doing the best I can , trying to tackle this with straight Perl or trying to convert and extract info from the .pdf . Hopefully, I will be successful. As to quitting...I will not be doing this forever. I will not be doing this forever. I will not be doing this forever. Many thanks, and of course further advice is welcomed! Telly	[reply]
Re^4: Extract data from website and transfer it to Outlook by hesco (Deacon) on Apr 28, 2006 at 04:45 UTC
If you have a pdf of the data you need try pdftotext, which is a part of the xpdf library. It does a great job of extracting useful text from any pdf not based on a scan of an image. Then you'll have plain text to parse into fields. That would save the WWW::Mechanize learning curve and the javascript frustrations it raises. -- Hugh	[reply]