RE: [PHP-DB] grabbing data from other peoples sites

I guess my real question is how to parse the output from someone else's site. Setting up the lookup procedure from data in my database and filling their form with the address is the easy part. How do I make their form "submit", parse the output, store it, and then reuse it in another function? I have never tried something like this before. - Matthew -----Original Message----- From: Martin Norland [mailto:martin.norland@stjude.org] Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 10:09 AM To: php-db@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP-DB] grabbing data from other peoples sites Perry, Matthew (Fire Marshal's Office) wrote: [snip] > What this has to do with PHP > > Is there a way to write some sort of PHP script that accesses to the county > auditors website, automatically enters the info into their form, grabs > whatever information is outputted, imports the data into our SQL Server, and > repeats the process for all addresses in our database? > > I will of course research the legality of this before we implement the > script. I just wanted to know if this was even feasible before we meet > about this. I don't even know where we should start. Sure, you're just issuing POST requests with data from your database, and parsing the output - and entering that extracted data back into your database again. A better question, however, would be how are you planning to handle this once you are ready to run it - are you just storing the address at each corner of your 'covered regions'? You'll need some kind of fuzzy lookup to be able to do all this. Maybe a better solution would be to just link directly to the county auditors website with instructions, allowing the users to do their queries as they're needed? Even if you have every current covered address on file, people may mistype things - new buildings are created - roads are renamed, etc. Someone should contact maps.google.com and see about adding this sort of information to that :) Cheers, -- - Martin Norland, Sys Admin / Database / Web Developer, International Outreach x3257 The opinion(s) contained within this email do not necessarily represent those of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php