I deal regularly with a custom internet application that my nonprofit
organization subscribes to. It requires me to input data manually and
regularly and much of this is repetitive and has its quirks and
difficulties. For instance, every time I enter a record I'm forced to
enter the current time in two fields. The first field is the hour (e.g.
3 for a time between 3:00 and 3:59) and the second field is minutes
(e.g. 59). The hour persists, but doesn't always update on time, forcing
me to manually change the hour field.
If I use my own VFP application to enter the data, I can have the time
saved to my own VFP data automatically off the computer's clock, saving
me the trouble of entering it manually, looking at the clock, etc.
I can also supply data to my records driven by my own tables instead of
having to enter it manually into fields like I have to do when using the
web application.
The problem from my perspective is getting the data from my own VFP
tables into the browser form of the internet application. That
application is written in PHP on a MySQL database. It has private access
requiring a username and password.
I don't want or expect to be able to automate the process completely,
that's not the issue. I'd just like to make it reasonably convenient to
enter the data into the internet application from my VFP data. I was
thinking that I might be able to use a macro utility of some sort to
grab the data from FoxPro and jam it into the internet form. I could
inspect the form before saving data. I would certainly inspect the data
online for errors, which is easy to do, as well as correct errors at any
time.
The internet application has an autocomplete function, but it can be
rather dodgy and it's subject to problems with bad data entered by other
people, something I have no control over. I'd rather use my own
autocomplete functionality, driven by my own data. I'd use that on my
client side VFP application when I enter the data, prior to
"transferring" my data to the web application. Ultimately, the data
would be stored on a server somewhere in MySQL, although I have data
locally for my own purposes.
How doable is this and what might I use to do it? TIA for guidance.
Dan