[thelist] PHP, JAVA File retrieval

[Jay Blanchard]

Good morning group!

I am in the process of analyzing the following situation and wanted to see
if any of you might have done this or something similar before...

Each day we have a person who is responsible for going to a secure web site
,logging in, (which redirects to) a JAVA applet. This JAVA applet has a set
of tabs across the top, one of which is labeled 'Daily Records'. The tab is
clicked on and then a set of zip files is listed for download.

All done manually every day.

What we would like to do is develop some sort of automated method to do this
file retrieval using PHP (as a stand alone executable run by a CRON job)
since it has excellent file handling functions. We could use PERL too.

Unfortunately the company we retrieve these files from will not make them
available in a more convenient manner because "if we do it for you, we have
to do it for everyone". My arguement was that we already had access, there
was no need for a JAVA applet layer of abstraction. The arguement fell on
deaf ears, leaving me in this position.

Does anyone have any ideas? I am trying some things, but looking for
'eye-openers' and 'ah-ha's!'

TIA!

Jay