Submit form via PHP and read resulting page?

[chillichopper]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a solution to this problem, although I'm not holding out much hope 🙂

I want to write a script to grab tracking numbers from a shipping company's website.
To access the tracking number, you need to enter the order number in a form and submit it. The resulting page which displays the tracking number is a .html page and so does not read GET variables. This precludes simply getting the contents of the tracking page using the order number in the url i.e. I can't simply read tracking.com?order=XXXXX

I know it is possible to 'submit a form' via php, but once submitted would it be possible to read the resulting page which contains the tracking number?

For example if the form is on this page: tracking.com/track_parcel.php, once submitted it returns the results page which might be tracking.com/track/tracking.html which is a static page containing the tracking number I would need to read via php.

I hope I have described this well enough to make it clear.

Thanks

[dagon]

it can be done with curl, and of course you have the permission of the company to do this.