WEB API and piping with REST and HTQL or Watir

[lpm]

Hello all.

I am projecting a lot of REST API programming, but some sites do not provide APIs and all the web scraper systems I have looked at wasn't robust enough to use in a business applikation. The only two frameworks worth talking about seemed to be HTQL from http://htql.net/ and Watir from http://watir.com/.

So now I am trying to determine what framework to use in conjunction with AutoIt. 

 

Q1: Does anybody have any experience with AutoIt and HTQL, and was it positive and how to best use it in AutoIt? Maybe in conjunction with the Irobotsoft framework.....

Q2: Does anybody have any experience with Watir in AutoIt, and how did it perform, and how to use it in AutoIt?

Q3: I have searched this forum for REST examples. Did anybody have some different level examples on using REST in AutoIt? I only have some rudimentary examples right now. 

 

Purpose: Just to for clarification, the framework is to be used for searching several webistes for information about a company. Sites like Facebook (They have a nice API) Linkedin (also having API) Eniro (Nice API), and the companies own website (NO API). Google search (NO API) (Google + has an API) and so on. You get the picture. My App resembles the Salesforce Radian6 but for the Office365 Office 2013 platform. 

It sounds like a lot, and it is, but so far a fun project.

[DW1]

Will you only be pulling XML?

I know that there are a lot of XML examples floating around the forums.

If you are also pulling JSON, I've seen some parser functions here as well, however I have not worked with any of them so I cannot claim that they handle the data perfectly.

As for HTQL, I don't know that it has anything to offer that Dale's IE.au3 couldn't handle.

Figure out what sort of data you want to work with (JSON/XML, or both) find a parser that works for you, and if you are working with a site that doesn't offer up data, check out the _IE functions to do pretty much anything you can do with HTQL.

[lpm]

 

As for HTQL, I don't know that it has anything to offer that Dale's IE.au3 couldn't handle.

Figure out what sort of data you want to work with (JSON/XML, or both) find a parser that works for you, and if you are working with a site that doesn't offer up data, check out the _IE functions to do pretty much anything you can do with HTQL.

Thanks a lot. The IE.au3 seems to be the solution. I just did not view it from that prespective. Sometimes it takes an other opinion to see what is right in front of you. 

Everyday I work with AI I find new and powerfull features, helped by this forum.     

About the XML parsers - Thats a new issue to tackle.