[thelist] including remote/third-party content

Hassan Schroeder hassan.schroeder at gmail.com
Thu Jul 26 17:50:57 CDT 2007


On 7/26/07, Joel D Canfield <joel at streamliine.com> wrote:
> our client's site requires a third-party web tool to be built into their
> site. their current site uses frames, allowing the vendor's content to
> spill down and over as far as necessary.
>
> I've avoided frames and iframes since about '96, but I'm not aware of
> any other way to include someone else's page within our own.

You can incorporate it directly into the page at the server, if it's not
too complex a layout. That also gives you direct access to it's DOM
properties.

How exactly depends on the server; in JSP/JSTL it would just look like
  <c:import url="http://example.com/third/party/tool" />
stuck in the page where you wanted the output. If it's an entire web
page, you'd probably want to strip out everything outside the BODY
tags. And if there's JavaScript involved, yes, it gets more complex.

Ideally, the third party would offer the tool as an embeddable object
rather than a complete page. Call it a "widget" and tell 'em they'd be
just So Tres Web 2.0  :-)

And on a Web 2.0 note, you might also google "mashup tools" for
some other possibilities...

Have fun!
-- 
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder at gmail.com



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