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Make my job easier-me-do

From: koswix 9 Jul 2013 10:41
To: ALL1 of 34
40559.1
I'm working (boo, work!) in an airport carpark for the summer (yay, money!). The job is fine, almost fun at times, but there's one really boring thing I have to do every day and I'm sick of it already.

Each day I have to go onto a comparison site for parking and get a quote for one days parking for next week. Then I have to update a spreadsheet with the price for our 2 carparks and the competitors near by. Then I have to repeat that again for 2 days parking, and 3 days parking, and so on up to 31 days.

Then I have to do the same thing all over again on 7 other comparison sites. THIS IS REALLY FUCKING BORING!

It strikes me that there should be an easier way to do this, so what is it? Bear (ROAR) in mind that I have no webserver to run a PHP script, but would it be possible to do something in, say, JS that loads the pages, strips the prices out and puts them in an excel or CSV file? And how would I even go about beginning to do that?


(kiss)
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From: ANT_THOMAS 9 Jul 2013 10:48
To: koswix 2 of 34
40559.2 In reply to 40559.1
Is it impossible to install WAMP on your work PC?

What are the comparison sites?
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From: ANT_THOMAS 9 Jul 2013 10:51
To: koswix 3 of 34
40559.3 In reply to 40559.1
Also, this....


EDITED: 9 Jul 2013 10:52 by ANT_THOMAS
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+1/1
From: Kenny J (WINGNUTKJ) 9 Jul 2013 11:15
To: koswix 4 of 34
40559.4 In reply to 40559.1
I don't think you necessarily need to be running a web server - it's more some kind of website-grabber-macro-type-thing(me-do) you need.

In the past, I've used wget for that kind of thing, but passing in parameters to forms can be a bit of a pain in the arse. Perhaps something like this is what you're after?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/imacros-for-firefox/

(I've not used it, and they use the word "repetitous" in be blurb, which strikes me as a particularly egregious bit of word-mangling.)
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From: Kenny J (WINGNUTKJ) 9 Jul 2013 11:17
To: ANT_THOMAS 5 of 34
40559.5 In reply to 40559.3
That's a great chart!
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From: PNCOOL 9 Jul 2013 12:12
To: koswix 6 of 34
40559.6 In reply to 40559.1
I thought the idea of using a comparison site is that you don't have to look on multiple sites?  Seems silly if you have to check all of the comparison sites instead.
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From: Ken (SHIELDSIT) 9 Jul 2013 12:24
To: koswix 7 of 34
40559.7 In reply to 40559.1
What about something like this?  You didn't mention what OS or browser, this is for Firefox I guess.  I have it installed but haven't gotten around to using it yet.

*I noticed an IE logo on there so I guess it works with that as well.
EDITED: 9 Jul 2013 12:26 by SHIELDSIT
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From: Kenny J (WINGNUTKJ) 9 Jul 2013 12:26
To: Ken (SHIELDSIT) 8 of 34
40559.8 In reply to 40559.7
That looks rubbish. He'd be much better off using the one I suggested.
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From: Ken (SHIELDSIT) 9 Jul 2013 12:30
To: Kenny J (WINGNUTKJ) 9 of 34
40559.9 In reply to 40559.8
 %-) I blame it on lack of sleep.  Great minds and all that!  Sorry though, I just skimmed the posts and was really excited that I had something that might be useful.
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From: koswix 9 Jul 2013 13:05
To: ANT_THOMAS 10 of 34
40559.10 In reply to 40559.2
Can't install anything, these are old creaky machines with XP Pro (actually not that creaky, but the booking software only runs on XP). We do have Firefox though, if that matters.

Comparison sites are:
FHR
Skyparks
Park & Go
Secure Airport Parking
NCP
Purple Parking
Holiday Extras

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From: koswix 9 Jul 2013 13:05
To: ANT_THOMAS 11 of 34
40559.11 In reply to 40559.3
(giggle)
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From: koswix 9 Jul 2013 13:06
To: Kenny J (WINGNUTKJ) 12 of 34
40559.12 In reply to 40559.4
Ooh, that could be useful - if not for outputting to a CSV then at least save me filling in the forms each time.

EDIT: actually, seems that's *exactly* what it does. Must resist urge to play now because I'll probably break something...
EDITED: 9 Jul 2013 13:11 by KOSWIX
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From: koswix 9 Jul 2013 13:07
To: PNCOOL 13 of 34
40559.13 In reply to 40559.6
There more booking agents rather than comparison sites - each one charges a different price for the same place based on their fees etc. In the competitive world of airport parking we need to keep a daily eye on what the other parks are charging and adjust our prices accordingly.
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From: koswix 9 Jul 2013 13:08
To: Ken (SHIELDSIT) 14 of 34
40559.14 In reply to 40559.7
I think Kenny's one would be better.
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From: Ken (SHIELDSIT) 9 Jul 2013 13:14
To: koswix 15 of 34
40559.15 In reply to 40559.14
Why you racist mother fucker!
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From: koswix 9 Jul 2013 16:46
To: Kenny J (WINGNUTKJ) 16 of 34
40559.16 In reply to 40559.4
The page URLs seem to be in a pretty straightforward format. Example:

http://www.fhr-net.co.uk/airport-parking/results/?airport=13&parking-from=16%2F07%2F2013&parking-start-hour=09&parking-start-min=00&parking-to=16%2F07%2F2013&parking-end-hour=17&parking-end-min=00

So obviously you have airport, arrival day/time, departure day/time. Wonder if it'll be easier to automate it via the URL. I've had a quick play (NJ) with iMacro and I'm already out of my depth :D
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From: ANT_THOMAS 9 Jul 2013 16:49
To: koswix 17 of 34
40559.17 In reply to 40559.16
Are all the URLs like that? I haven't checked out the ones that you linked but I will have a look in a min. If they are similar a bit of wget grep and sed in a bash script would no doubt give you something usable.
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From: koswix 9 Jul 2013 16:58
To: ANT_THOMAS 18 of 34
40559.18 In reply to 40559.17
Just checking them now - NCP is a cunt, but hopefully the rest are OK. I wouldn't mind just having to check NCP.

https://prebook.ncp.co.uk/public/NCP/flow.htm?_flowExecutionKey=_cDD3E98EF-FF8C-8537-4390-E15C82AA8080_k29162C6C-4EFB-F891-8208-D3A86F669727
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From: ANT_THOMAS 9 Jul 2013 17:11
To: koswix 20 of 34
40559.20 In reply to 40559.19
FHR and purpleparking look the easiest to script.
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