Web-based http requests

Web-based http requests:

https://www.hurl.it/

Excel to web and back again

The goal here is to learn to take a number in Excel and then automatically post it to a site on the web.

A second goal is to automatically read a number from the web.

This guy used VBA in word to call a Windows library.  So this solution is Windows only, but . . . maybe Excel is mostly Windows only anyway:

http://www.wayne-robinson.com/journal/2009/7/28/wordexcel-http-post.html


 A more general discussion is here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/158633/how-can-i-send-an-http-post-request-to-a-server-from-excel-using-vba

From that discussion, one person used Querytables from VBA, which meant his solution worked for both Windows and Mac:
http://numbers.brighterplanet.com/2011/01/06/using-web-services-from-excel/

He also has a little bit to teach about going from the web to Google Docs and back.




But here's a more comprehensive resource if you're looking to learn about Google docs:
http://builtvisible.com/playing-around-with-importxml-in-google-spreadsheets/

Might need to learn about Xpath for this.

It's also possible to link to a specific cell in Excel:
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/197922

Web queries in Excel:
http://www.vertex42.com/News/excel-web-query.html

Nice tutorial for http access on Android

http://hmkcode.com/android-internet-connection-using-http-get-httpclient/

Make sure to go to the bottom to look at the asynchronous class.

Nice resource for working with the web from Android.

Working with the web is always chancy because you may not have connectivity.  You don't want anything to hang, so you need your calls to be asynchronous.  Here's a nice library that handles that for you:

http://loopj.com/android-async-http/

Handy curl commands for web requests from the terminal

http://www.codediesel.com/tools/6-essential-curl-commands/

On post requests:
http://superuser.com/questions/149329/what-is-the-curl-command-line-syntax-to-do-a-post-request