nonhumans submitting webforms

For complex topics that regular users would not be interested in. For power users and database administrators.
Post Reply
User avatar
Ardavan
Posts: 106
Joined: Sat May 15, 2010 9:10 am

nonhumans submitting webforms

Post by Ardavan » Sat Apr 13, 2019 6:36 am

Hello all,
I'd like a script I'm working on to submit OpenDental webforms on behalf of its users.
Trying to POST to https://patientviewer.com/WebFormsGWT/G ... Forms.html with cURL I get error 405 - HTTP verb used to access this page is not allowed.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who will laugh at this joke, and those who won't. ~Annonymous Bug Writer

User avatar
jsalmon
Posts: 1551
Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2010 12:33 pm
Contact:

Re: nonhumans submitting webforms

Post by jsalmon » Mon Apr 15, 2019 9:11 am

The POST-able entity that you need to communicate with is not publicly available.

Why not skip the middle man (Open Dental) and make your script directly insert sheets into the database (essentially what Web Forms do in the long run)? Or is there a specific reason that you want to use Web Forms in a script-like fashion?
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

Jason Salmon
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

User avatar
Ardavan
Posts: 106
Joined: Sat May 15, 2010 9:10 am

Re: nonhumans submitting webforms

Post by Ardavan » Mon Apr 15, 2019 10:11 am

Thanks jsalmon, your insight is always appreciated.
I'm working on a Caries Risk Assessment patients can complete at home, and webforms seemed to be the easiest way of achieving my goal with minimal effort.
I was thinking of having a simple website/form/whatever that patients can navigate to on their phones/pcs/etc to complete the assessment. Their score would then be calculated and displayed for them as well as submitted to opendental's webforms for later retrieval by our team. This may still be possible with some python hacking (have my script emulate a browser and interact with the webform), though no longer seems like the path of least resistance.

Anyways that's just one possibility, and as my programming teachers for some reason liked to say there's more than one way to skin a cat!
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who will laugh at this joke, and those who won't. ~Annonymous Bug Writer

User avatar
jsalmon
Posts: 1551
Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2010 12:33 pm
Contact:

Re: nonhumans submitting webforms

Post by jsalmon » Mon Apr 15, 2019 12:36 pm

I would want to create some sort of API for a new web service (kind of like FHIR) that you could call in order to upload said data so that we could scrub it first. I can't have data coming into my database that doesn't adhere to the arbitrary rules that we expect because it could destabilize the web form experience for all of our customers (rare, but this is the worst case scenario). This would be a lot of effort for something that would be faster for the client if we came up with a solution that went directly into their database instead of first coming here to HQ and then waiting on the client to download from HQ at their leisure. This would also be opening a can of worms for where web forms will be coming to HQ from (currently one and only one entity can upload web forms). I'd prefer if we could come up with an alternative solution of some kind.

Emulating a browser session is completely fine IMO because it would technically be using our web app (which knows about the arbitrary rules) and will not let you submit the forms unless all rules have been met. This is important as well for future versions of our web forms because we will often times enhance it with new features that might introduce yet another new rule that needs to be followed and the framework hasn't been written in a way that any other entity other than our own web form app can upload data to it for the office to download.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

Jason Salmon
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

Post Reply