On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, mgerics wrote:

(disclaimer: I'm so snowed-in on curl so I'm probably one of the worst guys to
offer advice to newbies...)

> Have an operation that gets data via HTTP.
> 1st data access requires entry of username and password.

It is very important you details exactly how this "requires entry of username
and password". It can be done in many ways and the particular way your URL
uses of course decide how it is done with curl.

> Subsequent accessses simply require the URL.

It sounds as if you'd need to use cookies received from step 1 to successfully
manage step 2. Things like this are usually managed with cookies.

> I am fairly certain curl will do this for me. dl'ed some archives and tried
> curl <my url>, where <my url> is any of several urls that work fine with
> ping. Apparently mising something, as I always get back 'curl: (6) Could not
> resolve host: <my url>; Host not found'

That makes it sound as if you should be using a proxy or something. curl
doesn't detect or use that automatically, but you need to tell it to.

> Could someone please repond to this email with exactly what files are needed
> and where and how to install them - I am not familiar with 'make', etc, so
> prefer a pre-compiled binary.

You already have curl, that should be enough. The rest is about using curl
correctly. Possibly from a scripting language or similar, but that is your
pick.

> Any helpful hints and suggestions that do not refer to lake jumping or
> acroabatic kite control will be appreciated.

I hope I managed at least partly! ;-)

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