Making a C++ Program that Extracts Data from Online Dashboard?

[aseagle]

How would I go about making a C++ program that prompts the user to enter start and end dates, and then takes the user's start and end dates and inputs them into the appropriate fields of the online dashboard, allowing it to filter for the correct data and export it to Excel? This is a task that can be done manually, as the online dashboard enables you to export any data you filter for to Excel, however I want to automate this task so that I don't have to do it every week.

I need some pointers or examples on how to accomplish this/ establish communication between my C++ program and the online dashboard in question.

[jonnin]

well.. not to be a jerk, but step 1 would be to determine exactly what form of communication you can use. Is it a TCP/UDP type connection? If so, youll need to know the message format to ask it to send you a response of the data. Is it a database? If so, youll need a database connection library and have to set up all that.

If you must you can sometimes write a program that drives another program, even performing a series of mouse clicks and such. You may also be able to find a generic one of these; gamers use them to have a game play some automatic tasks while the human is offline. These tools are very crude and often fragile, and a last resort for a program that has no useful interface via normal methods.

you call it a dashboard, and most of those actually pull data from some other source. A third option (before #2, even, that is STILL the last resort) would be to find its sources and get the data yourself from where it does.