Store imported formatted data

[Mark Thiessen]

Simply put, I'm trying to capture formatted text data and save it in Filemaker so it can be viewed later.

Its a travel approval database where travel requests can be submitted and approved electronically. When our travel dept. books a reservation they will put the 6-digit reservation code (issued by the airline reservation system) into the record. At this point I can build a URL around that 6 digit number and display the itinerary and invoicing on a web page provided by our affiliated travel agency. I want to import the web page into the original travel approval record for future reference. The 6-digit reservation codes recycle every few months so simply saving the URL doesn't work.

Currently I'm saving as PDF and inserting as quicktime into a container field so I can view it in filemaker in a large popup window. Not the best solution but it works. I'm working on automating this with applescript.

Are there better ways to do this?

Should I save the web page source into a filemaker field then loading that into a browser?

Will XML help? I'm not too familiar with xml.

I might be able to get the travel agency to give me the data in another form. But what?