Web to winforms data exchange

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I have developed a Medical application using WinForms (vb.net). The result of the demo was beyond what was expected. As such the client wants to arrange a meeting with a Hospital group to establish if the group will be willing to allow me to interface with their online (http) application.

Basically the doctors logs into the Hospital http front end. Once logged in the doctor has access to clinical data pertaining to his/her patient that was treated in the hospital.

I don't have any technical information with regards to the Hospital, their backend or how they deliver the data to the front end.

Since I am clueless when it comes to web services / web development, I would like to know if there is a "standard / general" method of exchanging data between web and Winforms ? Basically I need some guidance before entering the meeting just to be prepared when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of things.

I was thinking down the line of sending the Username and Password together with the patient hospital tag / number to their system....

Please remember, like I said, I have no background on the Hospital system, how they sending data to the front end or what backend they are using.

Advice and guidance will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
T

What I have tried:

This is to get acquainted with possible methods of exchanging data between two different platforms.

Posted 17-Aug-16 9:46am

Tino Fourie

Updated 17-Aug-16 21:09pm

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MCSIDevelopers · Answer 1 · 2016-08-17T21:09:00

Solution 1

There are two options and the one is a bit easy in terms of coding and the other will require a bit of coding and technique. First option is to try to be in contact with the IT technician for that hospital I'm sure he has access to web hosting files or should I say credentials of the web hosting which you can have a look at and not just anything but be more to the data base side and a background info on how the data is retrieved shared and linked. With that you will be able to create an application that will use the web database to retrieve data or

Second option, you will have to know the controls used on the web you are referring to so that you will be able to get data from it. Take a look at these examples: The first one, Another one, And check web scrapping too.

Posted 17-Aug-16 21:09pm

MCSIDevelopers

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Tino Fourie 18-Aug-16 9:54am

MCSIDevelopers, thank you very much for your reply and information contained therein. I just finished 2 months of bone crunching API32 and SendKeys integration into my application.... I am happy to know that one is able to extract data from html pages.... I would hope there are API32 possibilities as well. I think I've read somewhere that it is possible.

However, to keep things as simple as possible I would rather strive to settle on a working relation with the hospital group rather than stripping info off of html pages. Besides, the doctors must log in to be able to access particular patient information and I want to automate that process, simply because I believe it can be done.

As for accessing the 3rd party DB directly through one of their (or my own) Stored Procedure (SP) is something that neither of the entities would want to entertain, at least not at this stage. And since their SP's can change at any time without prior notification, I want to establish if there is a method of automate the LogIn process by passing log in credentials to the host, if successful send the patient code and then receive the relevant data into my app.

What are your thoughts on WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) ? I just started reading up on it and looking at code to see what can be done code wise with the WCF lib.

Regards,
T

[no name] 18-Aug-16 11:54am

Well for passing data is easy, you can have your application (WinForms) which a doctor will use to login as if the doctor is logging in to the WinForm application but behind your application is sending the credentials to the login fields of their website and you will have to catch the returned result just in case the credentials were wrong. Then you can return data or scrap data from the website and then temp store on your application so that you will easily return the data the doctor want or display only the data the doctor has filtered. I will have a look at WCF.

Tino Fourie 18-Aug-16 12:21pm

MCSI, thank you again for your reply. I believe there is some misunderstanding between what my application does and the sought after interaction between my application and that of the hospital.

Summary:
Hospital: - Doctor access patient information via Web Browser after providing a Username and a Password. The doctor then needs to print the information and then only can they enter some of the data into their own practice software.

My Application: - It is a WinForms app and stores specific patient information (certain information is the same as provided by the Hospital) it gathers from various sources - the Hospital system is a resource I want to have access to. Backend is a MySQL DB.

The requirement, the WinForms application should be able to send Username and Password to the web host, after successful login it should send a Patient Number to the web host and receive Patient Information from the web host. The entire process should be a background process without any user interaction. The Username and Password can be preconfigured under User Settings for example. The Patient Number is the only information that the user will need to provide.

It seems that WCF can send and receive data to and from a WinForms app to a Web Host - I am still not fully up to date on the WCF library at this time.

[no name] 18-Aug-16 16:27pm

Well I think I also said the same thing, but for the fact that you didn't state that the login will be automated which is why I said "a doctor can then login" but the same thing applies. Can you send the website link of that website? I've done something like this before using vb.net to perform auto login to a website, you will need to know the control names. In a main while you can check HttpWebRequest to get the responce back or poll data check this out http://stackoverflow.com/questions/92522/http-get-in-vb-net , If you have a site you wish to try what I'm saying on send me the link I will make a sample for you and see.

Tino Fourie 18-Aug-16 17:07pm

MCSI, thank you again for your reply.

Unfortunately I don't have any info on the Hospital system, not even a URL. I am working purely from what was described to me by the doctor and the print outs they have made in the past. I also made mention in my original post that I have absolutely no technical information regarding the Hospital system.

I am going to keep digging into WCF for now and see if it is a possible way to go and if so, how it can be used to achieve the desired result.

Once again, thank you for your input this far. It is appreciated!

Regards,
T