[KLUG Members] Dynamic HTML/HTTP question

[Robert G. Brown]

Consider the following HTML fragment:

<form action="index.asp" method="post" name="dateSearch" 
 onsubmit="return validateForm(this)">
<input type="text" name="startDate" size="15">
<input type="text" name="endDate" size="15">
<input type="image" src="/images/button-images/search_button.gif"
 width="50" height="10" border="0">
</form>

I've removed a bunch of formatting stuff that might make this come 
out looking nice, but is otherwise obfuscatory.

To keep everyone with us, this causes the browser to open up two 
input fields and generate an image area; a buton, which when pressed, 
will cause entered data to be transmitted to the server.

My specific example involves ASP, but I think the question I'm about
to ask applies to any kind of dynamic HTML. It's not realy related to
the HTML itself, but actually to the underlying HTTP....

You see, what I want to do is NOT actually BE at the page at all... 
oh, I know the URL of the page, in case it matters, let's say it's...

     http://www.yifnif.com/search/index.asp

What I want to do is submit my query under program control, and 
without manual intervention. Put another way, I would like to know 
how to get the server to react AS IF someone had answered the requests 
for data by filling in something, and thus send along the response 
that would result from the processing of the query that is submitted.
  
If the server were a .cgi, .php, etc.. the details might be different, 
but I think the overall framework would be the same. 

Any solutions or tools would be helpful; this is I think quite beyond
simple but useful tools like "wget"; I think I know a solution, but it
would be a fair amount of coding, which I'd like to avoid if the wheel
has already been invented somewhere else...

                                                     Regards,
                                                     ---> RGB <---