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IS JAVA THE RIGHT LANGUAGE?

 
Greenhorn
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Hello!

I have spent several hours learning the basics of JAVA...my goal is to be able to write a program that will access a certain website & check for certain information...so far, I have only been learning to write simple graphics programs and games...nothing I have found so far in JAVA talks about how to write a program that will access a specific website.

I am new to programming in any language...I need to write a program that accesses a web site (like a hotel website), logs in, and checks for availability during a certain day...and if it finds that date not available, I want the program to keep checking the website several times a day and if/when it finally finds that date to be available I want the program to send me an email to alert me.

Is it possible to write a program in JAVA that will do this?

I just don't want to waste alot of time learning something that can't eventually do what I want...Does anyone know how I can learn the type of JAVA programming I am trying to accomplish without first learning all the simple programs (like graphics programs I am not going to be using)...I am desperate, would be very grateful for any responses....please point me in the right direction! THANK YOU!

PS my computer skills are above average, I do understand the JAVA tutorials I have read, and I have written a few simple programs...I want to learn and I will put in the hours, but I am having trouble finding web-based tutorials that go beyond the simplest programs...is buying a book the only answer? I would like to continue learning online...Thanks again!
 
Rancher
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You can do that in Java (as you can in any number of other programming languages).

It sounds like the interaction is complex, but probably not really difficult. I'd use a library like jWebUnit for this; it can automate interactions with web sites and supports cookies, authentication etc.
 
Ranch Hand
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For sure in Java you can do it. You can do even more. Java can help you with a lot of support like NetBeans or Eclipse. Anyway you should have knowledge of the libraries and/or available tools even if you have knowlege of the language and that, as you understand is the hard part but internet can help you a lot on this search.
Anyway if you are looking for a simple batch language for fast prototyping I can suggest you also the Python language. It has not so extensive IDEs but has a lot of ready to be used libraries. Personally I used it to retrieve data from sites, synchronize the work of several programs and manipolate the file system. It could be worth to take a lot at it too.

have luck
 
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