Hi all! 
I have a script which analyses HTML documents and summarises some information for them, related to my work. The script itself works fine, if I have access to the HTML pages concerned. However, most of the ones I need are only accessible when I log in to a (public) website with a username and password field.
So my question is this: can a PHP script automatically "enter" the username and password, and log into the website, then (remaining authenticated for that session) fetch the protected pages that I need, just as if a human was sitting doing the same thing? No captchas are involved. Obviously I would need some information regarding the target page's username/password form and method of submission... but how would I go about doing this, generally?
My sincere thanks for any help.