[Tutor] Controlling applications

[Jeff Younker]

On Jun 9, 2008, at 8:51 AM, W W wrote:
> Originally I was planning to use urllib to post/retrieve
> the data, but as far as I can tell, the bank uses several variables
> and some javascript to authenticate everything, and it seems overly
> complicated to try and manually figure it all out.

Raw urllib is a poor way to interact with web sites;  it's too low
level.  Instead you might consider the libraries mechanize and
twill.  They are essentially web browsers in a library.  They won't
handle JavaScript, but they do let you retrieve, fill in, and send
forms without worrying much about the details of the conversation.

You might give them a try before completely giving up on the
command line mechanisms.

Alas controlling applications is very hard in Unix land and
very easy in the Windows world.

-jeff