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Absolute Newbie question


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Okay, heres my issue.

I want to write a program that will ask for 3 variables and then sleep until a certain time. At this fixed time, it will open a web browser, open a static webpage, fill in 3 forms, click okay, then print. Nothing special, something like a glorified ebay sniper. In fact, its pretty much a macro, but I want it to only do this one function.

So here is my problem. While I am more than computer literate, I have never had to write a program before. Pretty much everything I have ever needed has already been done, and I am not one to reinvent the wheel.

So what do I need to do? What language should I write this in? Where is a good source for sample programs to learn from?

I apologize for this post, as I am sure there are several a day. I searched for "ebay" and "form filler," but did not come up with any meaningfull results.

And, this is not an ebay program, that is just the best way I can describe what I am wanting to do. This program will be used to checkin online for frequent fliers, as this can only be done after midnight, and may flyers do not stay up this late.

Thanks.

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I suppose you could write a simple webpage that would do this in Javascript, and it would be easy enough to do, assuming you know some Javascript...

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javascript??

I'd suggest either Java or C#. You can get everything java related (SDK downloads, tutorials, etc) at java.sun.com. I'm not sure where the best place to learn C# is, but I'm sure someone could help you out there.

Keep in mind that any programming language can do what you are asking:

C, C++, C#, python, Java, VB, Delphi ...

I just suggested C# or Java since they are the easiest to learn.

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javascript??

I'd suggest either Java or C#.  You can get everything java related (SDK downloads, tutorials, etc) at java.sun.com.  I'm not sure where the best place to learn C# is, but I'm sure someone could help you out there.

Keep in mind that any programming language can do what you are asking:

C, C++, C#, python, Java, VB, Delphi ...

I just suggested C# or Java since they are the easiest to learn.

Surely you're not suggesting that a full-on OOP language is easier to learn than a simple scripting language like PHP or Javascript....

I'd suggest that rather than code a program for it, you might as well use a program that can control your mouse. One program that comes to mind is called mousemachine... You set up a pattern (like... click here, type this, click here, type this, press this button) and set a time, and it'll automatically perform that pattern at that time.

I can't find the link to mousemachine at the moment... It wasn't that great of a program anyway, and I'm sure you can find a better alternative.

If you really want to code it though, it'd be rather simple to do it in PHP, and stick it on a server that supports CRON jobs. In the coding you could have one page to accept the variables and stick them in a file, and then another page (which would be run in the CRON job) that would create a few hidden input fields with values from the file and submit them. However, you'd need to do quite a bit of source searching and reverse engineering to pull that off. The drawback to this would be that if the form you're submitting requires login/authentication, the server you're submitting to probably wont accept it without that info.

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Surely you're not suggesting that a full-on OOP language is easier to learn than a simple scripting language like PHP or Javascript....
No, what I did was read the specification given by the poster, and realized that javascript wouldn't work.
I'd suggest that rather than code a program for it, you might as well use a program that can control your mouse. One program that comes to mind is called mousemachine... You set up a pattern (like... click here, type this, click here, type this, press this button) and set a time, and it'll automatically perform that pattern at that time.

How is something like that going to work? Remember, this program has to...

ask for 3 variables and then sleep until a certain time

This entire program can be done in java with about 50 lines of code. No need for a web server, cron jobs, HTML, or anything else that takes an easy task and turns it into a difficult one.

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