Robert, are you familiar with the CFHTTP tag? It's a CFML tag that allows you to point at any web page and pull its results into a variable. The thinking here (if you don't use web services) is to have them offer a page which accepts whatever input you need to be able to give them, and it give back its result. You can then create a page on your site that does the CFHTTP passing in the needed data and get back your desired result. That page could return HTML, or a CSV, and more.
Now, you're talking about doing it a couple times a day, but I'm proposing instead that you could do it on the fly when the order is placed. Then you're getting more up to date info. There's no guarantee, of course, that between the time you check and then do place the order that the part may be gone. Other than doing just doing the check one more time immediately before ordering, doing something more elaborate (where the part is placed on hold on their end, for at least a couple minutes, and released if you don't buy) is doable but certainly a lot more work on their end. If you do for some reason just want to stick with checking once or twice a day, and updating your DB instead, you could also set up a scheduled task on your server (CFSCHEDULE or the admin interface) to do run this page doing the CFHTTP. /charlie http://www.carehart.org/blog/ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Reil Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 1:29 PM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: RE: [ACFUG Discuss] Vendor Data Problem HOW TO? Charlie, and Dave: Thanks for your replies. I am intrigued that you guys eluded to the possibility of using an ASP results file to data scrape. The real question is what is the easiest and most reasonable way to: List Part numbers and their availability, where: PN = Yes/no I wish I could do the following: Give a page of code to them. Know how to scrape it once it was pulled. Have it automated twice a day to update the status in our DB. This would do 2 things. Keep the DB in Sync with the distributor Post to me when new part numbers are available. They should have about 2-4k items. Is having them post it on HTML reasonable? Could a CSV be generated on their end? Ideas? The end result needs to be an automated solution to keep in sync. ------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ http://www.acfug.org?fa=login.edituserform For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ List hosted by http://www.fusionlink.com -------------------------------------------------------------
