activating a webpage's click command from python

[Cameron Laird]

In article <mailman.1023727993.12908.python-list at python.org>,
Grimes, Jessica C <grimesj at wharton.upenn.edu> wrote:
>How do I activate a click command on Yahoo's website from Python?    
>
>I want to create a  program that will ask the user what stock he/she wants to look up.  The program will then extract financial data from yahoo and import it into a spreadsheet.  
>
>My problem is that I don't know how to make the application take the user's input (the stock's ticker symbol) and place the user's input from python into the space where yahoo accepts input for a ticker symbol and activate yahoo's "Look up" click command. 
>
>I hope I have explained my question clearly.  If my proposed method is impossible, can you suggest another approach to designing the program? 
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Peter's already answered your question quite accurately
in several respects.

"Web scraping" <URL: http://cedar.intel.com/cgi-bin/ids.dll/
content/content.jsp?cntKey=GenericEditorial::ws_scraping&
cntType=IDS_EDITORIAL&catCode=CJA > is one common label
for this general idea of programmatic access to data in Web
pages.

If you don't regard yourself as a programmer, you might find
Web scraping a frustrating pursuit.  Some programmers do, too.

What you *really* want are the data available through a "Web
service" (WS), as opposed to a Web page.  I don't know how
far along Yahoo is in its WSification.

You're far from the first to write an application which re-
quires real-time market data.  Do you specifically want the
content from the Yahoo page, or would good data from anywhere
meet your requirements?
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html