I have little business problem, I need to make a script to fill (not send) out browser forms(only simple textfields, checkboxes and drop downboxes).
I need to launch multiple windows with the same form with different data to speed up form filling
What kind of scripting/programming do I need to use to fulfill these needs(Batch, JS .. ) ?
I have knowledge only of java, and basic html,c,c++ ... so if I can get basic tutorials I would be grateful indeed.
I have bits of ideas of how this is possible - through IDs of various field on the page which I can access to edit their values, so I just need language specific tutorials/suggestions.
Batch would be preferable if possible, because i need to execute the script through a java swing program.
P.S : If this is of any relevance, only browser acceptable is IE
dont think its possible through Batch,
I think easiest would be javaScript for this task. (chill js is pretty easy)
You can write a simple javaScript to fill in form
You should find how to fill form through javaScript helpful
Then you can use ScriptEngineManager to execute javaScript from your java code.
This tutorial should be helpful :execute javascript from java
You can't fill HTML-fields with a Batch-File. The easiest way is to use Javascript an Greasemonkey in Mozilla Firefox. You can find Tutorials here.
An other way to send data to an WebServer is to use in C/C++/Java Sockets and the HTML-Protocol.
Related
Is there some kind of tool (ideally for Chrome) in which I can fill out a long form that I am designing/testing many times?
I should be able to:
Fill out everything once and save it
Fill in the saved form with one button click
Fill out the form differently and save it as a different "profile"
I'm testing some things manually during development so I don't want a fully automated solution for this (I am using Symfony2.1 so I can write functional tests also). I just need a way to quickly fill out the form so I can save myself some time but I haven't been able to find a good Chrome extension or anything to do it. I remember Firebug in Firefox having something like this I think (I never used it though) so I imagine something exists.
The built in saved forms don't seem to be as useful for this task but maybe I'm missing something.
You can check out iMacros for Chrome:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imacros-for-chrome/cplklnmnlbnpmjogncfgfijoopmnlemp
Call it a rudimentary answer, but I believe the button shortcuts in Chrome accept Javascript. I've done this with FireFox by doing something like:
javascript:document.formname.fieldname.value='value';document.formname.fieldname2.value='value';document.formname.fieldname3.value='value';return false;
There are some plugins. I used the below one, and it can satisfy your requirement.
This extension allows you to fill all form inputs with dummy data.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/form-filler/bnjjngeaknajbdcgpfkgnonkmififhfo
Here this one is for storing the form data and reusing it later. plugin populates with the data saved later when you want to fill it again.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simple-form-filler/hbgbedpagfcecmjmlfpndghfclhnmmll/details
Hope this helps
This isn't an extension, but I've always found the easiest way to test a form is with a little jQuery.
I put a link under the submit button:
fillform
Then I fill the form with jQuery.
$('#fill_form').click(function(event) {
$("#name").val("Phoney Phoneyman");
$("#phone").val("555 867-5309");
$("#email").val("phoney#baloney.com");
$("#password").val("123456");
$("#password_conf").val("123456");
});
It takes about as long to do this as it does filling out the form initially and saves a ton of time. A tiny bit more work and you could generate random values - or values from a list.
Just remember to delete it all when you're done.
Google's form filler is just always incorrect enough to create work rather than save time.
Best form fill up extension ever is JunkFill.
I love it.
There is now a Selenium extension for Chrome. Selenium is one of the most popular webdrivers, I've used this as well, and even though there are a few oddballs in there, it works well generally:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/selenium-ide/mooikfkahbdckldjjndioackbalphokd?hl=en
I have made a chrome extension which exactly matches your needs, it may be worth a try - SimpleFill.
It's really simple and is available for Chrome, Opera, and Firefox.
Another useful chrome extension Formbot. When set to randomly fill the inputs, it will fill them with valid data.
You can check the Bug Magnet Chrome extension.
My problem is very similar to the one posted here:
http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/Plotting-Addresses-Maps-t1968130.html
except that thread never found any solutions. Basically, I'm working on an Access form that has a datasheet as a subform. Upon clicking a button on the main form I'm trying to make it so that a browser window opens up and, using the address columns from the spreadsheet data in the subform, plot all the address markers listed. I've looked up a lot of ways to attempt this but I've yet to find a way that seems to work.
I'm not even sure if it's possible to plot multiple markers on Google Maps, but according to research (and after trying it myself) it seems like it isn't, although I don't want to rule it out entirely because I'm still not 100% sure. However I know both Google Earth and batchgeo.com do allow this. I still want to try and do this on Google Maps, but if that doesn't work I want to try to do it using batchgeo.com and if that still doesn't work, then Google Earth (I don't want to make the user download external software if possible).
If it helps, from what I've read API's seem like a useful tool, though I'm not sure how to apply it to an Access form, it seems more like a way to embed to already existing websites.
I'd really appreciate if someone could help me figure out how to approach this problem!
Maybe this would help?
http://ramblings.mcpher.com/Home/excelquirks/getmaps/mapmarkers
It is Excel but should be translatable.
Here is another example, this time using Access:
http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/Google-Maps-Multiple-Mar-t1973499.html
...from what I've read API's seem like a useful tool, though I'm not
sure how to apply it to an Access form, it seems more like a way to
embed to already existing websites.
You're right. There's no way, that I'm aware of, to embed a Google Maps object in a form (like an ActiveX control). Microsoft MapPoint is a software product that lets you do Map integration by way of an ActiveX control (no need to use HTML and/or javascript).
What I usually do on a project like you're working on is I get my HTML page working the way I want it to, outside and independent of MS Access. You should be able to program and test the HTML file locally without having to use an actual web server. Just use something like NotePad++ or Sublime Text Editor 2 to write your HTML and Javascript and then open the file in your browser to see if it works. I'm quite sure you'll need to use Javascript in your HTML page to make this work. That's what the Google Maps API is all about.
After you have your webpage working, then you will have to go into Access and write code to create that web page on the fly with the address data for the current data set. You can just write it out to the Windows Temp folder and then open your browser control that that web page.
Julian Knight's answer links to more specifics on how to create the HTML page on the fly. It looks like gobble-de-gook, mostly because it is. Outputting HTML/Javascript/CSS from VBA is far less than optimal. This is why you troubleshoot it outside of Access, as much as you can.
Now that I can navigate a Web page via WWW::Mechanize and get information via HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath by accessing an id, I am left using Firebug to read the DOM in order to discover the layout of the HTML tree. The content that Mechanize captures is unstructured HTML, not good for human eyes.
Is using Firebug to ascertain the id I am after a typical approach? Once I get the id then I'm good to go, it's just that I've got several ids and pages with more ids to chase down and I was hoping to get (dump, print, etc.) a formatted layout of the DOM in order to make that discovery easier. Though granted, Firebug makes it pretty easy, too. I'm just wondering if I am missing an easier method.
Crossposted at PerlMonks.
If you need text, xmllint --html --format (comes with libxml2) does a decent job.
If you want a tree and mess with it and test out various expressions in a GUI, then Xacobeo is your new best friend.
Note: since both those tools rely on libxml, replace HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath with HTML::TreeBuilder::LibXML for compatibility. Evaluating XPath will be faster that way, too.
If you know Javascript/JQuery, then also install FireQuery. You can then test out CSS expressions in FireBug, and use them with modules that select HTML through CSS expressions, e.g. Web::Query.
I use XML Developer from Oxygen IDE for my recent development on XPath:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/download.html
It is a 30-day trial type of tool, but you can also search for XPath visualizer
It doesn't visualize a tree for you as far as I know (maybe there's a panel doing that). But it gives you some smart complete functionally that helps you to know what nodes you have available at any point. It is pretty big for XPath because it is hard to know where the parser pivot is really pointing at.
Well, well, here we go...
We have a java applet running on a regular browser (ff4+ or ie5+).
I do NOT have access to the java code / servlet. Nor even to the server.
I NEED to send/retrieve data from this applet. This means i must emulate an user onto it by clicking buttons and filling form's textboxes and also return data (after server response) wich ll be inside textboxes.
So the technologies avaibles to be used are C, VB, .NET (webbrowser object mainly), PHP (cUrl avaible), JavaScript, Sniffing the browser/server communication using Fiddler.
We really need this. But if thats impossible so we may have to know also.
The data is owned by my company so no copyrigth is inflicted.
Also i'm open to non traditional solution such as saving the html as an image and then retrieve the data using some OCR software...
Well so any suggestion or pointing directions would be gratefully appreciated.
Thx
Paulo Bueno.
Having to emulate a user browsing is wrought with problems and i would suggest an alternate route, if its feasible. These are the steps I would take:
Grab the applet class or jar from my cache (anyone accessing the page / applet can do this).
Decompile the code into Java source (Using jad or other preferred tool)
Review the process with which the applet communicates to the service
Write an application to submit my data to the service that the applet connects to and handle any responses just as the applet would.
You can run any applet without a browser using the "appletviewer" that is shipped in a JRE. This way it is possible but not practicable to read and send fake input with http://code.google.com/p/windowlicker/ to control the SWING GUI.
But within a regular browser environment with access to the code you would rather do this:
using the "scriptable" and "mayscript" attributes/elements in your object tag. standard browser JREs include a "plugin.jar" that contains the needed function to do this job. This interface lets Java-Applet code communicate vice versa to Javascript, from wich you can do whatever you want (i.e. ajax request)
this topic is rather complex, so check out what google tells us:
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/applets/_APPLET_MAYSCRIPT.html
http://www.raditha.com/java/javascript.php
Using this interface is a real pain, so i suggest to implement HTTPRequests within your applet to tell the PHP server whatever you want to tell it.
regards,
Michael
I do NOT have access to the java code / servlet. Nor even to the
server.
Emm... It is quite unusual situation. If you have the applet, of course, you should have access to its src files to modify :)
I NEED to send/retrieve data from this applet. This means i must
emulate an user onto it by clicking buttons and filling form's
textboxes and also return data (after server response) wich ll be
inside textboxes.
Anyway, to "emulate" user you can use the Robot object but still it will demand you to modify the applet code to make it support some additional functionality... As I can remember, JS etc cannot control Java Applet from the outside commands unless the applet does contain JS supported functionality for web page interaction... But still you say you don't have any access to the applet src so there is no information does the applet support netscape.javascript or not and how it support it so it is quite unclear... So I must ask do you have any docs of this applet?
Comming around the question text and getting back to the question title itself which says
"How can I extract data from a Java applet (inside the browser)"
I may suppose to say that
To extract data from Java Applet you can use netscape lib which supports Java Applet and JS interaction example, docs. That is the most optimal way in this case
Good luck
Might not be too difficult to de-compile/change/compile again the applet unless it is obfuscated.
I use JAD.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31353/is-jad-the-best-java-decompiler
If you must get your data by interacting with the java applet instead of reverse engineering it, check out FEST (Fixtures for Easy Software Testing). FEST is designed for testing Java Swing GUIs by simulating user interaction, but you can easily use it to automate your applet as well.
Check out the documentation page on testing applets to get started.
I am looking for a nice framework for developing a GUI builder Application. We have an application where 100Os of custom data entry forms and their print formats are required and each client will need some modifications on these. We have a developed a product using java based open source templatnig frameworks so that the layout and field definition are stored in database and rendered dynamically to the user. We also have an appication to design these forms but cannot do visual design.
Now I am trying to make a Visual Form Designer application for generating these forms. Can any one suggest some open source frameworks than can be used? Can I use Eclipse Visual Editor? Or is it better to develop some kind of parser for HTML using AntLR and then parse the HTML output from already existing GUI builders like Dreamweaver to get the desired output?
Thanks and Regards,
-- Kannan
Oooh, great question!
I wouldn't know any readily availble framework that you can use. Depending on your needs however, I think rolling your own shouldn't be too hard.
First of all, you probably wouldn't want to give the users too much freedom. Freedom only gives them the opportunity to mess things up and make the resultant forms hard to use. I think from your description that the fields are pre-defined, so that the user only needs to customize which fields appear on a given form, and in what order. Order can be a simple thing like top-to-bottom. Some semi-intelligent automatic layouting could be used to conserve screen space. Adding a feature to group fields together would probably also be useful, and grouping would lead to some kind of standard "group" widget.
Accepting simplified functionality like this, you don't really need the flexibility of a full gui editor. A couple of listviews, maybe a property sheet and a preview window will be enough to give your users the functionality they need.
Of course, this only holds for screen forms. Print forms may be trickier to layout, as people may want to cram as many fields as possible into very little space so the entire form can fit on a single page or something. I really don't have any suggestions for you there, but maybe a similar "simplified" approach with some intelligent auto-layouting could work.
Overall, my advice would be: Keep It Simple! (S... ;)