Looking for values over intranet or the Internet
This example is similar to the previous one, with the difference being that you have to lookup the museum opening hours on a website instead of a web server. In this case, you will use the HTTP Client step. This step is useful to retrieve information from websites that do not normally provide data through web services, like in the previous recipe. This method is also known as web scraping.
Getting ready
You must have a database with the museum structure shown in Appendix A, Data Structures, and a web page that provides the museum opening hours. The recipe uses an ASP page named hours.asp
, but you can use the language of your preference. This recipe will require a server that supports ASP (or the language of your preference), such as Microsoft's IIS, or using Apache's web server with mono, a cross platform, open source .NET development framework. The page receives the museum's identification and returns a string with the schedule. You can download...