[ale] CLI way to interact with JavaScript URL?

[Mike Harrison]

On Tue, 2 Dec 2008, Jeff Lightner wrote:

> OK it's been about 3 years since I last looked into this.   Back then
> the answer seemed to be there wasn't a way to do it with tools like
> lynx, curl and wget or any other CLI browser.

If you are a PHP hack like I am, I'd possibly start off by using:

  "class.XMLHttpRequest.php" from a PHP Script from a command line.
I use such tools for all kinds of things... it fakes JavaScript
Ajax style calls, but also works for other things.

Google for it. If you can't find it, I have one I use, but it's pretty 
common use for "Web 2.0" code, and I abuse it a lot for things.

Example:

function translate($incoming, $lang) {
     require_once ('class.XMLHttpRequest.php');
     $ajax = new XMLHttpRequest();
     $ajax->open("POST", "http://www.google.com/translate_t?langpair=$lang");
     $ajax->send("langpair=$lang&text=$incoming");
     if ($ajax->status == 200) {
         $result = $ajax->responseText;
         preg_match_all("#dir=\"ltr\">(.*?)</div#", $result, $trans);
         $translation = $trans[1][0];
         return "$translation";
     } else {
         echo "ERROR: $ajax->status";
     };
} ;