>>collect data from an HTML document using PHP (through a VFP form)
>
>I was thinking of EPS voodo tools but I am very interested in using PHP or >Python, Kylix. So with that in mind - what do you mean by "through a VFP >form"?
>John

I created a VFP6 application that has, among many others, a VFP form that embeds the IE6 browser. If you haven't tried this, the IE6 browser object permits you to expose just the display area with scrollbars...no button bar, no menus. It looks like any standard white text-box area on a standard VFP form...until you load it with HTML code. Anyway, this form is used in my app to display HTML and animated GIF files.

At the "other end" I have a standard RH7.2 box running Apache with PHP and MySQL. The VFP application's browser-form connects to my server and loads a PHP driven HTML page. I'm using PHP so that when the connect request is made by the VFP application, the app passes an ID string that is used by PHP to customize the HTML page that is returned. This HTML page is essentially a data-collection device with input for some standard stuff; name, address, phone, etc., and two buttons; one button clears the form, the other calls a PHP page on the Linux server to stores the data in a MySQL table, then it clears the form to ready it for more input. Performance is excellent in all respects. The only sluggish part I've found is when I use another VFP application and, via ODBC (which is the source of the sluggishness I think) harvest the data from the collection table.

This design provides my 285 clients (spread across 8 states) with a single access point (the html page) to input data. Most importantly, the page is only accessable via my VFP application. The user never even sees the URL that is called. It would be simple to permit access to the page via any browser, but then the users wouldn't need my application...self-preservation is Job #1.


Hope this helps John.
Mike