---
name: "informer"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "xt-toolbus"
version: "0.25-2"
release: "Debian 3.1 (Sarge)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/informer"
---

# informer(1)

lightweight, command line, HTML form handling

## NAME

informer - lightweight, command line, HTML form handling

## SYNOPSIS

**informer** \[ **-c -cloaked** \] \[ **-c -cloaked** \] \[ **URL** \]

## DESCRIPTION

This manual page briefly describes the **informer** commands.

**informer** allows you to fill out HTML  forms from the UNIX command line.  It is basically ment to be embedded in your own scripts.

## WHY INFORMER?

Most commercial website designers do not want you to ignore their graphics, because that's where the money is. As a result, they come up with schemes to prevent you from accessing their data without looking at the pictures. The schemes I came accross so far are:

- •

  browser name checking

  Basically not allowing you to see a page if your browser isn't MSIE or Mozilla.

- •

  Referer: header checking

  To prevent you from sending a precomposed HTML form to a URL, some sites check whether you have just visited their source page.

Informer handles both cases. The first one by masquerading as a I browser :-), the second one by actually visiting the source page first, and setting the Referer: header accordingly.

## SEE ALSO

[toolbus(1)](/toolbus/1.md), [perl-adapter(1)](/perl-adapter/1.md), [tifstoc(1)](/tifstoc/1.md)

## AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Julien LEMOINE \<speedblue@debian.org\>. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.