Automated Log Postings (Unscraping?)

[+arrowroot]

I'm working with another cacher on a Palm app and associated Windows tools to synchronize with the GPX files.

 

One of the concepts I've had is that when you locate the cache, you mark your Palm/PocketPC entry as "Found", record what you left and took, and jot your notes (hmm... pocket label printer for log books anyone?). When you return home, you sync with the PC. Open up the PC-side database application, and it says, "You have new logs to record. Post them?" and it would automagically send the forms to geocaching.com.

 

It's not hard to do... assuming the form fields stay the same over time (or at least there are no new required fields, and old ones don't go away).

 

Is this something which folks would find valuable? Is it something that makes TPTB uncomfortable?

 

Joel

 

I am Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt. I have many names, you know

[+Marky]

It sounds like an interesting app, I would certainly check something like this out if it were available. I don't think this would bother TPTB because you aren't scraping here, just posting data that would get posted anyway. The only scraping involved there would be to verify that the posts got entered successfully. And since this is data that would be sent to the user anyway, you are not increasing bandwidth at all. The only tricky thing I see is dealing with the login cookies.

 

--Marky

"All of us get lost in the darkness, dreamers learn to steer with a backlit GPSr"

[+parkrrrr]

The real concern I'd have is that this would lead to really boring logs. Reading other people's logs is half the fun of this game, and a log you enter while sitting in front of a keyboard is much more likely to be entertaining than a log you enter while you're sitting in the woods being devoured by mosquitoes.

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Marky:

The only tricky thing I see is dealing with the login cookies.

---

 

Those aren't tricky at all. There's only one, and it's easy to deal with. I have a Perl script that already deals with that (so it can download .loc files for arbitrary cache IDs.)

$request = POST( 'http://www.geocaching.com/login/default.asp',    ['S'=>'0','ID'=>'','U'=>'',     'username'=>$geocache_username,     'password'=>$geocache_password,     'Login'=>'Login']);$response = $ua->request( $request );$headers = $response->headers();($cookie) = $headers->header( 'Set-Cookie' );$request = POST( 'http://www.geocaching.com/waypoints/bulk_waypoints.asp',       $locform );$request->push_header( 'Cookie:'=> $cookie );$response = $ua->request( $request );$locfile = $response->content();

 

[+sbell111]

I would be very interested in something like this.

 

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

[iryshe]

We'll be providing a web service where you can post logs via SOAP in our new site (in .NET). We'll hopefully have it done in a few months from now, ready for the Summer.

 

Jeremy Irish

Groundspeak - The Language of Location™