Getting External Data for a page

[Stusi]

So i have a site that i want to be able to tell me customized information such as my bank account balance or the number of unique hits i am getting and i am wondering how to code a page that will go out and get info from other pages that require a login. For example, i want it to go to my bank's website and login as me then get my balance, save it as a string, then output it to a page on my site. I can't find ANYTHING on how to do this and if you guys could just point me in the right direction with a page or link that has some sort of explanation or even where i might start coding wise i would greatly appreciate it.

 

Thanks in advance

[insane_alien]

i am wondering how to code a page that will go out and get info from other pages that require a login. For example, i want it to go to my bank's website and login as me then get my balance, save it as a string, then output it to a page on my site.

 

are you crazy that would open up your bank account to hackers. seriously thats a bad idea. why don't you just login the old fashioned way. its safer.

[5614]

Agreed. The only way you could do that would be to give your sites your internet banking username and password. The site could then send these as the bank and possibly log you in, you could then possibly access the right part of your bank and possibly retrieve the required info.

 

If you manage to do this, which is hard because of the programming and because of the security, you will then be open to hackers because your site must contain your credentials. Even you make your site secure it will not be as secure as the bank, so it will be a degrade in security for you.

 

Not a good idea.

 

Why do you want to do it anyway? It's not much effort to log onto a website.

[reng]

i agree that it is a bad idea, but it can easily be done with perl. i do it in c to parse out large amounts of information from sites that you need to log in to. first you just "POST" the data to the site, parse out where the session name is, if at all - and then when you request the next page. simulate how your browser gets you to log in..basically..

[Dave]

For this type of thing I use PHP for simplicity. The streams make it extremely easy to grab the contents of a webpage and then use something like preg_match or similar to get rid of all the useless stuff with a simple regexp. I highly recommend that you do not do this for something like your bank balance. It's a recipe for disaster, and you can be really screwed over by it.

[RyanJ]

I highly recommend that you do not[/i'] do this for something like your bank balance. It's a recipe for disaster, and you can be really screwed over by it.

 

Frankly I don't think you could, the HTTPS connection that is used for most bank accounts is used to prevent exactly this. If you can do this then its a serious flaw... It could allow a hacker to do some pretty nasty things given the right circumstances!

 

Anyway, if you can - don't. Sending information that should be secure accross an unsecured connection is just asking for trouble, take Daves advice and don't even try it

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones