guys,

thanks for the replies.

tgreer, in response. (this will actually answer my second question myself, so i'm feeling a bit foolish).

I'm currently writing a few Java programs to scrape a website. unfortunately i've hit an issue with the racingpost website, as some of the pages are directed to a "restricted access" page. Its free subscription, so i've already got an account with them, but i have no idea about how to write the java to "feed" the username / password to the racingpost server.


i only started learning java a few days ago, and (embarassingly) i wasn't sure when i posted the question, whether the problem was going to be understanding the "javascript" in the website or the "java" code that i'm writing to send the details. I'm not actually sure what code is behind the scenes of the racingpost website any more either or how many interactions there are between the racingpost and my browser!)

can you confirm that i really need to post this into the java forum.....and if so i'll let it slide quietly off the bottom

(i also think i need to understand more of what i'm doing before i post the question again anywhere!!)

thanks

jake