Re: Extract data from website and transfer it to Outlook

[crashtest]

If my boss expected me to manually enter 3K addresses into a system, the first thing I'd do is quit. Really.

Certainly Perl is a great tool for just this sort of thing. But if the information you're trying to access is already on some website, it's probably stored in a database. If you can get someone to give you an extract of this database, you've eliminated most of your work already. All that would be left to do is import the data into Outlook. Is this a possibility you've looked into?

If that's not feasible, I would look at some tutorials, grab a copy of [id://merlyn]'s Learning Perl and cobble something together with the help of:

• WWW-Mechanize
• Open SSL (if the website is using SSL)
• HTML-TableParser
• The vCard module jdporter suggested

Hope this helps.

[phydeauxarff]

As I was reading this I was just about to post similar to your comment concerning the expectation of the OP's employer that they perform this function

of course, before I quit I would have asked for a contractor to write the code to accomplish the task

ah..the joys of having a pointy headed manager

[Paintermonkey]

Thanks guys! You have all been really helpful and really nice! I like this site so much I've taken the good advice and registered myself.

I've been reading up on WWW::Mechanize. Sadly, the website in question IS in Javascript. I haven't given up yet. I'm going to spend some more time looking up as much info as I can.

I also have acquired a .pdf version of the web data. I'm doing the best I can , trying to tackle this with straight Perl or trying to convert and extract info from the .pdf .

Hopefully, I will be successful.

As to quitting...I will not be doing this forever. I will not be doing this forever. I will not be doing this forever.

Many thanks, and of course further advice is welcomed!

Telly

[hesco]

If you have a pdf of the data you need try pdftotext, which is a part of the xpdf library. It does a great job of extracting useful text from any pdf not based on a scan of an image. Then you'll have plain text to parse into fields. That would save the WWW::Mechanize learning curve and the javascript frustrations it raises. -- Hugh