Forwarding POST data

Question

I've got a website that has a form that the user can type in. I want it to be the replacement for a 3rd party website (Autotask) form with the same fields. Normally I'd just have the action in my form go to where the 3rd party's form points and then have all the same id/name values for my own fields, but there are several problems with this:

Autotask's forms aren't just simple muli-field forms. They import at least 15 Javascripts that make something magic and unidentifiable happen, and they are incredibly difficult to read and understand. So that causes two problems, one that the form takes a very long time to load (5 seconds or so for 4 fields), and two is that if Autotask changes anything at all I'll need to redo the whole form (very tedious and crapshoot-y, and I already have needed to do it twice).

In order to make the load time more transparent, I put my copy of the Autotask form within an iFrame. That way the rest of the website can load separately from the expensive number of scripts I've got to include with Autotask's logon process.

Ideally what I want to be able to do is to just have those 4 fields on my site with whatever name and configuration I want, then send that POST data to my own PHP script, which will automatically (and transparently) submit that data directly through Autotask's forms in the proper fields. If I need to make the id/name match, that's okay. I can use HTML, Javascript, and PHP on this site.

EDIT: Autotask has built-in GET handlers for their logins. You'll notice that you have a client ID at the login (it will be the "ci" variable in the URL). If you send a GET request with the client ID there and variables for "username" and "password," then it Autotask's login page will immediately forward you to the client page, given a successful login.

Answer 1

one really round-about way of doing it is have your page load a form with some generic id/names. have a php script that scrapes their page for the correct id/names, and the ajax them into your forms.

That way you avoid having the load time of iframing their content in, or scraping their page on your initial page load and they change the id/names you'll always have it up to date.

Answer 2

I could write up a big post that explains on this, but really I think this is a perfect time to let someone else's words do the work.

Answer 3

I think a lot of people would advise against this in general, as you're kind of hacking the functionality of someone else's app. In this case I only advise against it because they (Autotask) have an outward facing API already. http://www.autotask.com/press/news_and_press_releases/071006.htm

I think that you'd be better off just utilizing it and developing something that functions pretty well within the constraints of their system.

Answer 4

Autotask's forms aren't just simple muli-field forms. They import at least 15 Javascripts that make something magic and unidentifiable happen, and they are incredibly difficult to read and understand.

Sounds like anti-spam measures to me? If so, then they will probably change over time.

So: follow NateDSaint's advice!

Answer 5

As a follow-up, it turns out that with Autotask they have GET handlers so you can just send information via GET. Problem solved.