Automated Browser App
This project is small, and very specific. It should be trivial for someone with reasonable web client programming skills.
What we’re looking for is a screen scraping, or more accurately a browser-emulation app that will log into a site that I use and retrieve some contact information that is not readily available otherwise.
Here’s the details.
I’m in the auction business, and I use a site to handle my auctions. What I need is the contact information for the bidders, but it’s not available in any kind of downloadable list, or through an API. It is available on a web page, however, from which I can copy and paste the data.
I’m tired of copying and pasting.
So what we’re looking for is an app that will emulate a browser to log into the website I use. You’ll click a few links to navigate to the Bidder Information page.
The list of bidder names will show in a framed window. Your software will need to “click” on each of the names in the bidder list. Each time you click, the main window will update, showing the bidder’s contact information.
It’s typical contact info, such as:
Name
Email address
Phone number 1
Phone number 2
Mailing Address
City, State, Zip
Some of the data is outside the USA, so the format may differ slightly based on the country the contact is from.
Your app will parse the contact information, save the information (see below) and then move onto the next contact name in the Frame.
When saving the information, you will either write it to a CSV, or write it directly to an SQL table across the network. I know that our contact management system uses SQL, and CAN import data via CSV. So it’s likely easier to just save the file to a CSV file, named with a convention that I’ll specify, somewhere on the network.
The altername method would be to update an SQL contacts table, but that may be problematic. Please just let me know if you have the capability to do that, if necessary.
The network is entirely windows-based, and I would like the app to run locally on one of our workstations. They mostly run Windows XP, but some run Windows 7.
I’d prefer this program run on a schedule (ie a CRON job), however I’d also want to be able to run the program on demand right on the desktop.
It does not matter to me which language you use for this project. You can use Microsoft tools, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, or whatever you think is the best tool to both emulate a browser, parse data from HTML source, and write it to a CSV.
My goal is to have this project done within a day or two. I’m ready to make a decision almost immediately if I can find the right programmer at the right price.
You’ll be paid in full upon successful testing of the program.
NOTES: This is a work for hire. I will own the copyright for the code you produce. I require a complete set of source code at the completion of this project. All code must be documented.