Interacting with a CGI web page

[Scott_Sewell]

Greetings NI Forums,

I am trying to develop a telescope pointing control system which needs ephemeris data generated by a Jet Propulsion Laboratory web site:

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi


The main interface to their horizons system is via Telnet which is insecure and no longer supported by LabVIEW.  I was hoping someone could advise me on how to get started using LabVIEW to interact with the above cgi based web page.  If I can do that, I can retrieve the required ephemeris data and parse it inside of LabVIEW using basic string commands.

Is there a basic tool kit you can point me to for interacting with web pages or any sample code?

Thanks,
Scott

High Altitude Observatory

Boulder, CO

[Sam_Sharp · Accepted solution]

Use the HTTP Client VIs:

The GET VI is the standard 'give me this web page' request - give it the URL to your Ephemeris data session and the 'body' output will give you the content of the web page - if you use the plain text output then that should make parsing the string easier (no html tags etc.).

(Also, you can use Telnet in LabVIEW, there just isn't a bundled library for it any more - you should be able to use the TCP VIs to roll your own and you can also interface with other Telnet libraries/applications e.g. PuTTy...there might even be something in .NET)