Accessing Web Site Data

[Ray]

I am trying to access some website data programmatically using LabVIEW.
I have been able to do the basics using datasocket VIs (i.e. Download
stock quotes), but I would like to go a little further:

What I'm trying to accomplish is access to the following website:

https://bssp1.cc.wmich.edu/BPROD/bwckschd.p_disp_dyn_sched

If you copy and paste this link into your browser, a page comes up
asking the user to search by term. I would like to programatically
select fall term 2006, then press the submit button. On the next page,
I would like to select which subjects I would like to search for, and
then once again programattically press "class search" at the bottom of
the page.

The goal would be to download the table of class information that
follows the "class search" button press and put all of this info into
an array. I am not sure how to access this text via labview. Any help
is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Ray

[MattP]

Hello Ray,

The most straightforward way of accomplishing this would be to create a direct URL with GET parameters included, then parse out the resulting page.  By this I mean building up the query string that the site uses to generate the page (for example, searching Google for Labview can be done with http://www.google.com/search?q=LabVIEW).  This would require the page to use the GET method for submitting the forms, and taking a look at it indicates that the page uses the POST method instead.  This is not directly accessible via the URL, so we'll need to get creative.  I assume that you do not have direct access to the database that the web page generates its data from, but if you did, that would make the operation nothing more than a command-line call.

It seems like the purpose behind all of this is to retrieve the data and show only what your users want.  Do you have any other access to this data besides the web page you referenced?