[SGVLUG] Polling Web Sites

[juanslayton at dslextreme.com]

     Got a little project here that I could use some help on.  El Monte
City School District uses a program called Aesop to post daily
openings for substitute teachers.  All I have to do is go to their
web site and click on the search button and I can see who has
currently called in to be absent.  Trouble is, if someone calls in
sick just after I've checked, I won't find out about it until the
next time I check.  And I have better things to do than sit and click
on the search button all evening.
     So I began to figure out ways to poll that site automatically.  The
current approach works like this:  A timing program (written in C)
runs in the background on a virtual terminal and produces a negative
pulse on data line 1 of the parallel port every few minutes.  I 'hot
wired' the left click switch (high, pull-down side) of a USB mouse to
that data line (through a diode to protect the port in case someone
physically clicks the mouse).  By leaving the cursor on the search
button, the background program electronically clicks that button
every few minutes.  All I have to do as I go about my business is
glance at the screen every now and then to see if anything new has
come up.
     But this is over-complicated.  There ought to be a simple way to poll
that page programatically without messing with the hardware.  Say, by
using the usb event mechanisms?  Like as not somebody somewhere has
already written code to do it.  I'd appreciate anyone who could point
me in the right direction.

John

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