[Tutor] website is returning error when I post data

[eryksun]

On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Benjamin Fishbein <bfishbein79 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This program checks to see if a college buyback site is buying back
> particular books.
>
> action="/BuyBack-Search.php?CSID=AQ2ZJKUWKZJBSD2T2DDMKMKB"
>
> When I go to the website(without using Python) and I paste the text (isbns)
> into the text box then enter it, it comes back with the error:
>   Oops... there may be a mistake here.
>
> Sorry, your search could not be completed at this time. Please try again.
> (Error: BB-09-00-05)


You'll need to use something like Firebug to examine the headers of
the POST. CSID is based on the session. There's probably also one or
more hidden fields. Consider using "mechanize":

http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize

Web scraping and automating forms is unreliable. A website isn't a
documented, stable API. More importantly, scraping often violates the
terms of service:

http://www.textbooks.com/CustServ-Terms.php

    The foregoing licenses do not include any rights to:

    ....

    enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to
the Site or its
        systems;

    use any robot, spider, data miner, scraper or other automated
means to access the
        Site or its systems for any purpose;

    ....

    compile, repackage, disseminate, or otherwise extract data from the Site.