Jean Marie COUPRIE wrote:
> I have written a few scripts using Rexx Regina + rexxcurl with the help
> of liveHTTPHeaders extension of FireFox.
> It is not so easy and there is the problem of some servers that pay
> their services by imposing to the user to look at some advertising
> screens. Apparently there are 2 URLs : the main to the application
> domain and the other to the people that manage advertising. Curl seems
> to log and show only the sources of the pages to an from the application
> and nothing of the messages (cookies) to or from the other URL.

Curl only downloads what you explicitly ask it to download.
It does not download images in an html page. It doesn't even
parse HTML or interpret JavaScript...

> At some
> stages I have to click on an image to choose the advertising,

You "have" to?? Why?

> at this
> point 2 URL messages are sent one to the application saying "proceed",
> the consequence of the other being that I receive a screen for a company
> that try to sell me something (obviously I just close this screen in 99%
> of the cases...). This 2nd message often include variable informations
> (e.g. text=1234) that seems taken for the cookies that I have not seen
> with curl (only with liveHTTPHeaders), so I cannot simulate this
> message. For my purpose the first message is sufficient. BUT I assume
> that the application server says to the advertising server "I have
> generated n clicks to you, pay me x $" but the other answers "I have
> just received m (with n>m because mine are missing!)" They may discover
> that I have used an automate that does not look at their advertising
> and be very unhappy!

How they reckon impressions and clicks shouldn't be your problem.

Besides curl users, indexing bots and CUI browsers (e.g. lynx) avoid
downloading images. Browsers with no enabled JavaScript engine are also
quite common.

> Is there a solution with cURL to send the message to the advertising
> server to make it happy ?

Telling curl to send a request will let it do so. Happiness is beyond
its reach...
Received on 2007-11-12