Picking Up HTML Objects in VB

[feodosij]

I've got an HTML document with a form that has a lot of textboxes. I'm performing operations on the input that the user puts in the form & there are also "hidden" objects that the user doesn't know about.
That part is all set, the problem is that I want to extract the values of the objects (text & hidden) from the html & print it in a certain way (that doesn't look like the webpage).
I would like to do this in VB, but I am stuck. I cannot find a way to get VB to recognize the individual objects (it will only recongnize the webpage as a whole).
Does anyone have any ideas? I will take any ideas at this point -- even if you have ideas for languages other than VB.
Thank you!

[HarryW]

Hmm, I've been sitting here for a while eating crisps and thinking about this one.

I'm not aware of any way to 'collect' the values in the text boxes, or any elements in an HTML form for that matter. I know that the variables are passed when the form is submitted, but before that, I know of no way to get at them.

Is it possible that you could have another page (HTML) which uses the request object to collect the variables, and lay out this page as you want to print? As far as I can see, it would be fairly easy to do, but I'm not sure if this is the kind of solution you want. As I say, I don't know how else to get at the variables.

They are either passed in the URL (GET method) or the HTTP request body (POST method), so you might be able to submit the form, but intercept these variables and use them in VB.

I'm sorry I can't be more help than that.

Harry

[compuGEEK]

Hi,

If you're using VB6 and running IIS or Personal Web Server, try the app as an IIS Application. It really is quite cool.

You can then import your HTML doc and use it as a template as well have access to individual objects.


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CompuGEEK
[email protected]

[HarryW]

Hmm, cunning.

[feodosij]

Well, I feel really stupid because I've been working on this for weeks, and this is the first time that this simple solution has occured to me. The form is submitted many times -- it runs through a Java servlet that sends the values to a COBOL program. Then that program sends the values to another servlet which saves some of the values in an Oracle database & then recreates the original webpages (with any changes that the COBOL made). So, all I have to do is use ODBC to connect the VB program to the database & take the values from there! So easy, yet it took me weeks to think of it!
Thanks for your help -- the IIS Application stuff sounds cool, so I think I'll look into that anyway.