DVD Collection Database?

[oldbuoy]

Is it possible to automatically import from a website, the movie data (i.e.
Title, Actors, Length, Format, etc) required to fill the fields in the DVD
Collection Database rather than entering it all manually?

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

If you can find a website that has an appropriate interface, you should be
able to retrieve the information.

The template Microsoft supplies certainly doesn't have the capability built
into it (although you should be able to write your own VBA code to do it).

It's possible that there are 3rd party databases out there that can already
do it, but I'm not aware of any (although I haven't looked for them)

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

You can "scrape" the HTML page. I've got a sample in my November, 2003
"Access Answers" column in Pinnacle Publication's "Smart Access". You can
download the column (and sample database) for free at
http://www.accessmvp.com/DJSteele/SmartAccess.html

Unfortunately, the two sites that I used to illustrate my point in the
article have changed since I wrote the article, so the examples probably
won't work anymore. Hopefully, though, you can figure out from the article
(and by seeing the code) what needs to be done. Post back if you have any
questions.

 

[Fred Boer]

Dear Doug:

Could you please expand on this for me? I often use the National Library Of
Canada and the Library of Congress web sites to obtain book cataloguing;
I've "copied and pasted" fields manually, but I've wished for the ability to
"copy and paste" information automagically from their web pages.

Is there some way to do this programatically? Could you point me in an
appropriate direction?

Thanks!
Fred Boer

 

[Fred Boer]

Dear Doug:

That looks veeerrrryyyy interesting! It goes to the top of my list of things
I am going to try! It would be *so* slick to have a button that could lift
the cataloguing information I need from the web page and insert it into the
fields of my form... I can't wait to try it!

If I have questions (a likely prospect! <g>), I'll start a new thread rather
than continue here; the new subject would be something like "Scraping a web
page" or something similar.

Thanks very much!
Fred