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Is it possible to programme software to do the following?

by MarketingZen
5 replies
Hi,

Did'nt know where best to put this!

Is it possible to develop software that will scrape the details entered by somebody into a form or lead form? Like if a particular website has a standard lead form which gets sent to them, the same details can be scraped?

I heard somebody had software developed to scrape the phone numbers of a UK based car website and wondered how far you can go with this? Or can you only scrape data if it is a membership site with saved data?
#programme #software
  • Profile picture of the author Manfred Ekblad
    Originally Posted by Labno View Post

    Is it possible to develop software that will scrape the details entered by somebody into a form or lead form? Like if a particular website has a standard lead form which gets sent to them, the same details can be scraped?
    Yes, if the data collected by the form/lead form is published in one way or another. Some scripts that people use to capture leads use a simple text file to store the details. If you know that they are using such a script, you can easily find their textfile with leads. It's published, the site owner just don't know or care.

    Originally Posted by Labno View Post

    I heard somebody had software developed to scrape the phone numbers of a UK based car website and wondered how far you can go with this? Or can you only scrape data if it is a membership site with saved data?
    If the data is available... then you can scrape it. If the data is in a private area, such as in a membership site, then the software can still scrape it if you have access to the site (username&password).

    If you just want quick & dirty access to data, there are several queries you can type into google to find out what data is available.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr. Enthusiastic
    Labno, if your idea is to grab information that people enter into someone else's web site, that's highly illegal and will almost certainly result in jail time if you're caught.

    If you're asking about people entering information into your own web site, or a site belonging to your client, then it's trivial for a program running on their web site to gather the information that users entered into a Web form on the site.

    Please clarify what you have in mind. If you're asking how to do illegal computer piracy then this thread should get deleted. If you don't know how to read form information on your own site, then you need a very beginner-level Web coding tutorial.
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    • Profile picture of the author MarketingZen
      A client has a network of sites and wants to pull all his details into one...and your right I do need a beginners tutorial! Thanks for the replies so far.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mr. Enthusiastic
        Originally Posted by Labno View Post

        A client has a network of sites and wants to pull all his details into one...and your right I do need a beginners tutorial! Thanks for the replies so far.
        You're welcome, and I'm glad to know that you are officially involved with the sites.

        I'm really surprised that a non-programmer wound up in charge of this programming project.

        As Nicelife said, if the information has already been collected from the sites into some databases, then you need to export & merge the databases.

        Going forward, you need to capture the information from the sites into one or more databases. If you use more than one back-end databases, then you'll need to export & merge the data on a regular basis.

        If there is a budget for the project, you're probably better off hiring programmers who already have the relevant expertise.
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  • Profile picture of the author nicelife
    Yes it's possible to do that,

    Does it involve exporting mail addresses from current storage of the addresses or is it just about collecting the addresses that are being entered from now on and forward?
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