web scrapping - POST and auto-login

[james <at> hal-pc.org]

please excuse my ignorance of Python.  i know enough to be dangerous 
(was able however to make Freevo support my FM tuner with a little hacking).

Ultimate goal:
read N bytes from PATTERN on page A into VARIABLE.
POST VARIABLE into TABLE on site B.
email VARIABLE to myself.

what i have to work with:
---------------------------
#!/usr/local/bin/python

from urllib import urlopen
from re import search

URL = "http://wifirouter/WL_WPATable.asp"
pattern = "wl_key1 value='*([0-9,a-f,]*)"
doc = urlopen(URL).read()
result = search(pattern, doc)
print result.group(1)
---------------------------

   I'm trying to update the WEP key on a wireless router via script and 
email the results to myself.  this will be run once a week.  Site A 
already generates random keys, so i figure that's a good place to get 
VARIABLE from.  The example above gives me the current key of the router.
   What i'm having trouble with is the key on site A (one i wrote myself 
http://www.hal-pc.org/networking/cgi-bin/wepgen.cgi ) provides 128bit 
keys by default, but i only want to use 64bit (10 characters).  so.. 
rather than make it select 64bit and all i figure it would be easier to 
use the above example for getting the /current/ key, modified it to read 
the entire 26 character string from site A, but [1] how do i crop it to 
10 characters.
   [2] how can i then auto-login to site B (the router's web config via 
pop-up dialog box. *not* a form) and then [3] post VARIABLE and save the 
changes.

   I know this sounds like a lot, but if anyone can provide me with any 
example code i can maybe modify to fit, or point me to some good 
reference material.  all the pages i found on logging into a site 
involve ssl and cookies, which, in this case at least, isn't involved here.
   If there is any other info i can provide (ie. sections of relevent 
HTML) then let me know.  any assistance you have to offer is greatly 
appreciated.

-- 
- - james <at> hal-pc.org - -

"Friends don't let friends use Mandrake"
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