When trying to integrate one website with another what is the way to go? Iframe or pulling content?

Question

hi,

My company has multiple vendors that all have their own websites. I am creating a website that acts as a dashboard where customers can access all of the vendor's sites. I wanted to know what is the best option for doing this?

Here's what I have so far:

Iframe

• Can bring in the entire website
• Seems secure enough (not sure if I'm missing any information on security issues for this)
• Users can interact with the vendor's website through our site
• Our website cannot fully interact with the vendor's website (Also may be missing info here)

Pulling in the content

• Can bring in the entire website
• Not very secure from what I hear (Some websites actually say that pulling another website in is a voilation of security and will alert the user of this or something similar...
• Users can interact with their website through our site
• Our website can fully interact with the vendor's website

Anyone have any other options...?

What are some of the downsides to bringing in a site with an iframe and is this really our only option for doing something like this?

Optimally, we would like to pull in their site to ours without using an iframe- What options do we have on this level? Is there anything better than an iframe?

Please add in as much information as you can about iframes, pulling content, security, and website interactions like this. Anything to add in is appreciated.

Thanks,
Matt

Answer 1

As far as "pulling content" is concerned I wouldn't advise it as it can break. All it takes is a simple HTML change on their end and your bot will break. Also, it's more work than you think to do this for one site, let alone the many that you speak of. However, there are 3rd party apps that can do this for you if you have the budget.

You could use an iframe/frames, however, many sites might try to bust out of them and it can ruin the user experience of the site within the frame.

My advice is to use the following HTML for each link in your dashboard.

<a href="http://www.VendorSite.com" target="_blank">Vendor Site Link</a>

Answer 2

If you can have the sites that you are embedding add some client-side script, then you could use easyXSS. It allows for easy transferring of data, and also calling javascript methods across the domain boundry.

Answer 3

I would recommend iFrames. Whilst not the most glamorous of elements, many payment service providers use iFrames for the Verified by Visa/Mastercard Secure Code integration.