Importing from a webpage

[jsaltzman]

I need to get some customer info from a web page online. It is all simple text. I attached a file that shows what the page looks like I need the customer name, address, city and zip, thats all.

displaypurchaseorder.zip

[Leb i Sol]

eh?

-whose page is this?

-did you find some random page and try to steal customer list?

-are you generating these pages?

sounds like a reverse approach to me..usally people generate pages from some data they already have!?

<< .: need more info :. >>

[jsaltzman]

no. but i got it. thanks.

That is where i get my customers from. alibris emails me, etc...

[cjaeger]

i usually do this by writing a short perl cgi which fetches the web page and transorms it into xml. Although i would not recommend stealing customer lists from other people, i do use it to translate filemaker fields with google transltion service or look up driving directions from mapquest.

A good perl script to start with is "newsgrabber.cgi" at perlarchive.com.

You would call the cgi by using the import remote xml script step.

Another technique would be by using url access scripting or appescript

tell app internet explorer

get_source of "http://www.cusomerlist.com/index.html"

select all

copy

end tell

and do the text cleaning in filemaker using middle(), position() etc.

the easiest, but $$$, approach is probably using troi url plugin.