What's being sent to the website to retrieve this data?

[PDXWilliam]

Hello,

I'd really appreciate help on this.

I'm programmatically retrieving data from a website and on one
particular page, I'm figure out what I should be sending to grab this
data. Please bear
with me for a 15 second demo that explains it more clearly ...

At this website:

http://www.cgis.ci.portland.or.us/ma...m?display=appn

type in:
04-069651

and then hit "Go"

That info is sent to the website, then a new URL which shows a page of
"Permits/Cases".

Question: What information is being sent to retrieve that
"Permits/Cases" page? IE. What happens after "Go" is pressed and then
the new URL comes up? I need to replicate this in Visual Basic (don't
hate me).

Is there some kind of "sniffer" I can put onto my browser that would
let me watch what is being sent?

Thanks for any guidance!!

William

[Jim Moe]

PDXWilliam wrote:

Question: What information is being sent to retrieve that
"Permits/Cases" page? IE. What happens after "Go" is pressed and then
the new URL comes up?
It's all part of standard HTML. Research how the <form> element works.
Is there some kind of "sniffer" I can put onto my browser that would
let me watch what is being sent?

The form method is "get." All of the info is placed in the URL.

--
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[Dave Patton]

"PDXWilliam" <wi********@ifrah1.com> wrote in
news:11**********************@o13g2000cwo.googlegr oups.com:

At this website:

http://www.cgis.ci.portland.or.us/ma...m?display=appn

type in:
04-069651

and then hit "Go"

That info is sent to the website, then a new URL which shows a page of
"Permits/Cases".

Question: What information is being sent to retrieve that
"Permits/Cases" page? Is there some kind of "sniffer" I can put onto my browser that would
let me watch what is being sent?

First, you could just look at the source for that page.
You'd see that the form is defined with
<form name="appnoForm" action="parse_results.cfm" method="get">
so the results of using "Go" will be sent to
parse_results.cfm using the GET method.
"04" will be the value for application_number1 and
"069651" will be the value for application_number2.

Aside from looking at the page source, an easier
way is to use the LiveHTTPHeaders extension for
the Firefox browser, where you'll see that
parse_results.cfm issues an HTTP 302 (moved) response,
which is why you end up on the "details.cfm" page.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/central.html
http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

--
Dave Patton
Canadian Coordinator, Degree Confluence Project
http://www.confluence.org/
My website: http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/