How to integrate between two services where one of them has no API?
Hello
I use https://speedexam.net/ to sell courses,the problem is that every time, I get a new payment I receive an email form paypal then I've to enroll the student to the speedexam database manually.
How to integrate between speedexam (no API) and paypal?
Write a script which controls a headless browser to complete the steps on the speedexam site that you normally do manually. Google for web scraping + your language of choice and you will find plenty of examples.
Can give https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer a try.
it seems a lot of work for me with my limited coding skills , can I hire freelancer to do it and is it safe for me to let him access my paypal account or must be done by in-house developer?
Second do I need to take a premission from speedexam or it can be do without their approval ?
thanks
It's a difficult integration, one i'd only really recommend if you have your head around the technical aspects,
When you start doing integrations without API's youre in some murky water because there is a higher chance of speedexam having an issue with what you're doing, maybe a better solution is to find an alternative to speedexam that you don't need to do all this extra stuff for
It might also not be legal to do what they are suggesting. Make sure you know what you can and can't do according to your local laws.
If he is a client of the service there would be nothing illegal about automating your workflow.
Unfortunately being a client doesn't mean you have the right to automate their platform/interface/service.
Terms of Service dictate how the service should be used, and if it's a proper ToS which you agreed to, it's legally binding.
A while ago I wanted to build something for uni students which included automated export support to a third party platform, and because this third party didn't have an API and explicitly rejected any form of unofficial automation, it was illegal. Unfortunate, but understandable.
This will, of course, depend on your local laws.
Breaking a TOS isn't illegal, it can lead to your losing access to the service but that is different. I can't imagine any local law in the world that would deem automating a workflow you are allowed to manually perform would be illegal. With the possible exception that it causes a DoS. Which country are you in that it was illegal?
Sorry, I used an ambiguous term. It's civil, not criminal. Breaking a ToS can get a company to sue you for damages, especially when you've done something knowingly and with provable intent (programmatic access to their platform, unauthorized access).
Obviously, most companies wouldn't just sue you, that would be silly. But it's also not correct to say "scraping/automation in this form is legal".
I personally wouldn't recommend building a business on breaking a ToS, but that's just my opinion. I'd recommend getting in touch with the company's support - maybe they're open to allowing your specific case.
They would have to prove damages. Automating a workflow you normally do(and not consuming more resources when you do it) would not qualify.
At least in this case the ToS is like 20 lines and none say anything about automation so they wouldn't be.
They do, and they have in the past. There's case law documenting it. Even LinkedIn has sued data scrapers/automation.
There is enough precedent, that's all I'm saying. It's your choice to build a business on it.
And yet LinkedIn, Airbnb, Groupon and others did their share of scraping in the early days and built multi-billion dollar businesses.
SpeedExam's page here mentions a registration API. You may want to do a bit more digging, or contact their support about how to use the API?
@MattWalter tagging you in case you didn't see this. 🙂
I know about their docs and it is only for automating user registration ! 😃