eBay sign in with curl in applescript?

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I have been trying to find a way to sign into ebay with a script. But, curl is way over my head. I found a couple things. This is an html page that will log you into ebay:
http://curl.phptrack.com/examples/ebay_account.php

eBay members, sign in to save time for bidding, selling, and other activities.
eBay User ID
Password

here is another document i found:
http://curl.nedmirror.nl/libcurl/php/examples/ebay_login.html

Doesw anyone know about this, or can you deduct how to do it with this info? Thanks! Ian

#2

I don’t have an eBay account, so I can’t try myself. However, this seems to be the important part of the actual login page:

[code]

[/code] This form uses the POST method[1], so you'll probably need to use curl's "--form" option. That may look like this: 
do shell script "/usr/bin/curl -sS --form 'userid=YourUserID' --form 'pass=YourPassword' --form 'MfcISAPICommand=SignInWelcome' " & quoted form of "https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?co_partnerid=2&siteid=0&UsingSSL=1"

However, if you want to do some serious work, then it would be better to use eBay’s API instead of scrapping stuff together with curl.

[1] See also: Methods GET and POST in HTML forms - what’s the difference?

#3

Interesting stuff here. I have 2 questions for you.

  1. This script seems to work fine. That html code I posted takes you to the site, but the script you gave me does not. Is it still logging in, even though I cannot see it? If I login this way are cookies involved?
  2. How do other things on the internet work as far as forms? Can I actually sort through the html code to get other curl commands so I can do fill out forms the same way?

Thanks Again!

#4

I didn’t say it worked, I was just giving you an example to start off with.

I don’t know how eBay works; you’ll have to figure it out (or use their API instead).

#5

You do notice that you’re handing your eBay user account and password to whoever is running curl-phptrack.com, right? How well do you trust them? They could very easily store those values. I’m not sure you want to do that.

I agree with the other poster who suggested you learn how to post using eBay’s API: eBay Developers Program

That way, you know you’re doing this in a supported way.