TITLE

  http_post - Send POST query to HTTP server

VERSION

  1.0

AUTHOR

  Thomas Aglassinger <uais57el6tli3001@sneakemail.com>

DESCRIPTION

  Http_post is a little command line tool to retrieve content from a
  web page via POST queries. It's mainly useful for web authors and
  people with HTML/HTTP knowledge who want to automatize repetitive
  tasks involving HTML forms.

  In order to use it, you have to know the exact location of a form,
  and the names of input fields. You can learn them by looking at the
  HTML code, especially the stuff included in <form>....</form>.

  If you don't know how to do this, this tool is of no use for you.
  Maybe aminet:dev/gg/wget-bin.lha is what you are looking for.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

  - AmigaOS 3.x
  - AmiTCP or Miami (uses bsdsocket.library)

AVAILABILITY

  - Aminet mirrors, for example
    ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/comm/www/http_post

PRICE

  Freeware.

DISTRIBUTABILITY

  Freely distributable, as long no files are added or changed.

USAGE

  Start your TCP/IP stack, open a CLI and find some web page with a
  form you want to get data from. Check the HTML code, and obtain the
  URI of the script that processes the form, together with names of
  the input fields. (Again, if you don't know how to do this, this
  tool is not for you.)

  Http_post needs the following parameters, in the exact order:

  - your email address
  - the location of the script
  - any number of "name=value" pairs describing the input fields

  The email address is sent in a "From:" header, so if you screw
  something up at the server side, the admin can contact you. While
  you can specify any address you want, it is generally not a good
  idea to specify fake addresses and deliberately screw something up
  because an admin can trace you back anyway. It only makes him more
  angry.

  The location of the script has to start with "http://".

  The "name=value" pairs each represent one input field "name" as it
  you would have entered "value". Don't use URI escapes here, for
  example don't type %20 to represent a space. Instead, use a space
  and put the whole pair between quotes. Use CLI escapes, for example
  "*N" to represent a linefeed. Don't leave a space before or after
  the "=". The name is usually case sensitive.

  Example (to be entered as one line in CLI):

     http_post you@host.org
               http://www.some.test/order.pl
               user_id=hugo
               product_id=134
               amount=1

  The server status goes to stderr, the content of the server reply
  goes to stdout. Thus, you can redirect the content to a file by
  using ">file.txt" or whatever. In case of errors, the server usually
  sends details in the content. These will also go to stdout, not
  stderr.

  If you want to use the output in some other tool, consider prepeding
  a <BASE> tag to resolve relative URIs like the document still is at
  the server. (Hint: "echo" and ">>")

KNOWN BUGS

  Http_post is completely dumb, and will not follow any server
  redirections. It cannot handle Secure-HTTP, deal with cookies, use
  additional proxies, etc etc.

  You can only specify simple input fields, thus you cannot upload
  files.

  Usabilitywise, the whole thing is crap.

SUPPORT

  Don't ask me about certain forms. Figure them out yourself.

  If you find any bugs, you can contact me at the address mentioned in
  the AUTHOR section.

HISTORY

  Version 1.0, 1-May-2001
  - initial release

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                44484  101268  43.9% -lh5- 148d May  1  2001 http_post
[generic]                 1847    3766  49.0% -lh5- 82ec May  1  2001 http_post.readme
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         2 files   46331  105034  44.1%            May  3  2001