Method and apparatus for filling out electronic forms
First Claim
1. An automated method for obtaining targeted information from a database accessible through an electronic form, said method comprising the steps of:
- a. retrieving electronic data having electronic-form data representative of said electronic form therein from a database host;
b. building an electronic-form object model including at least one form field of said electronic-form data;
c. evaluating in a classifier said electronic-form object model to determine a likelihood of said targeted information in said database as accessible through said electronic form;
d. when said classifier determines said targeted information likely exists within said database, populating said at least one form field of said electronic-form object model with valid field data;
e. initiating a request including said valid field data to said database host; and
f. receiving said targeted information from said database
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method is provided for accessing targeted information concealed behind electronic forms, accomplished by identifying the forms, determining which of the identified forms to fill out, and determining how to populate the fields of the forms to be filled out. Electronic content that might contain electronic forms is subjected to a series of transformations culminating in an object model that exposes the existence of any electronic forms in the content, the logical structure of the fields in those forms including features such as descriptive labels that may assist in the interpretation of the fields, and a mechanism for recording how to populate the fields. A collection of classifiers and their support components, whose composition is largely determined by the specific information being sought and whose implementation may employ techniques from the field of machine learning, are applied to features exposed by the transformations in general and the object model in particular, to make decisions about which forms to fill out, how to populate form fields, and how to cause forms to be submitted. The decisions are then applied to the object model to electronically populate the forms in a number of combinations likely to retrieve the information being sought.
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Citations
18 Claims
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1. An automated method for obtaining targeted information from a database accessible through an electronic form, said method comprising the steps of:
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a. retrieving electronic data having electronic-form data representative of said electronic form therein from a database host;
b. building an electronic-form object model including at least one form field of said electronic-form data;
c. evaluating in a classifier said electronic-form object model to determine a likelihood of said targeted information in said database as accessible through said electronic form;
d. when said classifier determines said targeted information likely exists within said database, populating said at least one form field of said electronic-form object model with valid field data;
e. initiating a request including said valid field data to said database host; and
f. receiving said targeted information from said database - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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9. In a method for obtaining targeted information from a database accessible through an electronic form, a computer-readable medium comprising computer-executable instructions for performing the steps of:
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a. retrieving electronic data having electronic-form data representative of said electronic form therein from a database host;
b. building an electronic-form object model including at least one form field of said electronic-form data;
c. evaluating in a classifier said electronic-form object model to determine a likelihood of said targeted information in said database as accessible through said electronic form;
d. when said classifier determines said targeted information likely exists within said database, populating said at least one form field of said electronic-form object model with valid field data;
e. initiating a request including said valid field data to said database host; and
f. receiving said targeted information from said database - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18)
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16. A system for obtaining targeted information from a database accessible through an electronic form, comprising:
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a. an HTML-to-XHTML converter for receiving electronic data in HTML format and converting said electronic data into XHTML format;
b. a form parser for isolating electronic-form data from other portions of said electronic data and converting said electronic-form data into an electronic-form object model including at least one form field of said electronic-form data; and
c. a form filler for populating said at least one form field of said electronic-form object model with valid field data and initiating a request including said valid filed data to said database.
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Specification