Which language to use for specific web site search information extraction?

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1

I am trying to find out which language to use to create a program script that will 1) input specific information into an input field on a single website, 2) retrieve the information from the resulting output of the page, and 3) store the information in a simple database.

It seems similar to a web focused-crawler, using PHP, and connection to a database using PHP. However, I am not sure if this is the right path, or if JavaScript, PERL, or some other method would be more effective. Or a combination?

Specific example would be a program that inputs a loan amount into a website like Bank of America, the desired interest rate, and then executes the search. Then, pulls the result or output, which would be something like 32 year loan, and stores that information in a database.

Any help in which language to use for this would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

2

PHP with MySQL or ASP.NET with Microsoft SQL Server are the two most common routes to take for a web application.

Since you will be dealing with forms, ASP.NET (C# or VB variants) tends to be a time saver out-of-the-box.

Essentially, you could do this with pretty much any server-side language connecting to a database.

Javascript allows you to do fancier stuff on the client-side, such as animations/effects, form validation (via AJAX), etc. It’s not a server-side language (although it can send a request to a server and receive a response).

3

Force Flow, thank you, that’s exactly what I was looking for, I’ll do additional focused research with your feedback.