how to write a program that will submit simple web form?

[supernova87a]

Hi all,

Here's my programming problem that I hope you can advise me on:

I would like to forward my email messages to my cell phone. However, I don't have an email address for the phone, only a web form I can use to send messages one at a time for free. The webpage is here if you want to take a look. It basically has two fields that you fill in, one is the phone number, the other is the text you want to send. It seems to be partly javascript based.

My question, how would I write a script that would automatically pipe messages to be submitted by http request (I'm on a unix/pine system)? I can probably figure out the forward messages to a shell script part, but what would I use to automatically submit web forms? I've heard of smarter people doing this with stupid web forms they have to submit often -- but what exactly would I do?

Thanks!

 

[DaveSimmons]

Perl scripting has a HTTP package, you'd use that to either POST or GET a message to the address that the web from page submits to (the < FORM action="address" > address).

I usually do this stuff in Visual C++ with winsock or wininet though, so you'll have to do some googling or hope a perl guru reads this.

 

[geoff2k]

My question, how would I write a script that would automatically pipe messages to be submitted by http request (I'm on a unix/pine system)? I can probably figure out the forward messages to a shell script part, but what would I use to automatically submit web forms? I've heard of smarter people doing this with stupid web forms they have to submit often -- but what exactly would I do?

How familiar are you with perl? I've written a few scripts to do this (using the Socket package not the HTTP package), but nothing specific for your particluar web form... if I send you a script, do you know enough about perl and HTTP to modify it on your own?

 

[supernova87a]

That would be really cool! I've fiddled with a few perl scripts before, just casually. Can you send it to me at kepler1@hotmail.com ?

Thanks so much!!!

 

[RSMemphis]

In PERL, you can do something like this, with an open http stream, so to speak:

POST 'http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi',
[ name => 'Gisle Aas',
email => 'gisle@aas.no',
gender => 'M',
born => '1964',
perc => '3%',
];

read more about that on http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/lib/HTTP/Request/Common.html

 

[geoff2k]

I just send you the script. LMK if you have any questions.