Archive for the ‘Scripting’ Category

Automate Moving Files to/from Windows Live SkyDrive

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

A few months ago, I surveyed several online storage sites. Although I might not make the same decision today, I decided to use Windows Live SkyDrive.  SkyDrive provides 5GB of online storage that can be shared with friends or the world, or be maintained as private.

I use SkyDrive to move files over the Internet between multiple computers that are physically distributed.  SkyDrive uses an https interface and I encrypt the files that I move back and forth.

When I first investigated SkyDrive, I was surprised that it did not provide a programmatic interface.  In addition, the SkyDrive user interface is a little cumbersomb to use, so I wrote a couple of AutoIt scripts to automate writing and reading files.  AutoIt code is available below for PutFile and GetFile.

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iMacros

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

Another interesting scripting option is iMacros.  This plugin provides a number of scripting functions that can be used to fill in forms and automate manual tasks.  It is available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer, and comes in free and paid versions. A feature comparison of all the iMacro variants is availble here.  The “free” versions provide subsets of the functions available in the paid functions.

AutoIt

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

AutoIt is a scripting language that runs on Windows.  It can be used to script a variety of actions.  It uses a BASIC-like syntax and provides a large library of windowing, string, browsing and math functions functions.  It provides the ability to insert/extract character strings and mouse motions/clicks in Windows applications. The documentation is somewhat lacking, but there is a relatively large following in the forums.

AutoIt can be used to automate just about any Windows task.  It is however limited to Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Chickenfoot Firefox Extension

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

I found an interesting tool recently – Chickenfoot.  Chickenfoot is a Firefox extension that provides a front-end that allows you to mashup web pages.  Chickenfoot can be used to automate web pages, fix annoying page implementations and to add new functionality.

Chickenfoot is being developed by folks at MIT.  Although I did not see a detailed development plan, they have some interesting ideas for the future of Chickenfoot and other related efforts.  An important aim of Chickenfoot is to empower the non-programmer to mashup the web.

Chickenfoot is “similar” to Greasemonkey.  It runs scripts using a Javascript syntax and it runs a lot of Greasemonkey scripts.

When you install Chickenfoot, the script editor sidebar becomes available in Firefox.  You use the sidebar  to enter your scripts.  The following script is a simple example of a Chickenfoot script.  It calls up the Google search page, enters the search key and runs the search.

go(“google.com”)
enter(“Chickenfoot”)
click(“google search”)

Unfortunately, there is a serious lack of documentation for Chickenfoot, but here are some helpful web pages:
Video tutorial
Documentation
Mailing list