Query info from a website

[tt1611]

Hi All
I am not sure if I am pushing my luck here but I have a database that holds PC info along with several other devices. In my PC table, I have a number of fields holding service tags and Manufacturer info for different brands eg dell and HP.

I am trying to create a form where a user enters (or scans) a service tag and get the service tag to be queried off one of the manufacturer websites.
Clarifying this further, Dell's website allows a user to input a service tag and display the necessary warranty information all in a couple of clicks. I have read somewhere that using API, it is possible to interact with a website from Access but I am not sure where to even begin writing this code. Do you know if this is at all possibel or am I pushing Access to its limits here?

 

[Galaxiom]

You need to understand the HTML Document Object Model. This DOM describes the elements that make up things like forms on a page allowing you to address them so you can read from and write into the fields.

It is a substantial learning curve.

 

[tt1611]

And I thought I was almost there with access. So in your opinion this would be the only way to interact with a website from withing VBA

 

[spikepl]

maybe or maybe not. You can be lucky, but it all depends on how the manufacturers website is made up. For Dell, you can have

http://support.dell.com/support/top...tails?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&servicetag=39KMXX ,

so it would be easy to display the page concerning the given service tag. But to extract that info and put it in the DB is not straightforward, as Galaxiom writes. Screen scraping is not reliable, because if anything changes, you may have to redo the lot.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

I have only used this occasionally - but often where a web-site expects you to be able to glean information it is supplied as a csv, or a XML in a given layout.

so eg, google gives you a way to enter a postcode/zipcode, and have that converted into a standard format XML file (KML file).

(I think that is correct)


maybe dell provide a way to interrogate their service data in a similar way.

 

[tt1611]

Thanks Gemma and Spike. Aside from venturing into the newly discovered DOM world i think I am going to find a way to keep everything running from inside Access instead. Venturing out into the world of XML and ASP is at this stage beyond me.

Thanks for all your help.