Automated filling-in of external Windows application fields ...?

ruby-talk
1

Dear all,

I have around 50 files which I need to open in an external (Windows) program, one after the other.
As each of them is about 100 MB larger, I'd like to automate the process.
The external application contains some data which are needed for the processing which I cannot
reproduce in another easy way.
I am not really familiar with coding in Windows, and I unfortunately do not know which GUI
was used to produce the external application I am using -- it seems that it was developed quite some time ago, in Delphi,
for Win95/NT, but still runs nicely on my Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit machine.
Is there a way, using Ruby, to get names of textfields and or other widgets of a GUI application on Windows ?
Could you provide an example on how to scrape Windows applications ...?

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Axel

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2

Axel Etzold wrote:

Dear all,

I have around 50 files which I need to open in an external (Windows) program, one after the other.
As each of them is about 100 MB larger, I'd like to automate the process.
The external application contains some data which are needed for the processing which I cannot
reproduce in another easy way.

Look at AutoItX, and google around for using the COM interface with Win32OLE for scripting via Ruby.

···

--
James Britt

www.happycamperstudios.com - Wicked Cool Coding
www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff

3

You might also consider using JRuby with Java's Robot class. I used it to automate GUI integration/story testing against Monkeybars, but it wasn't well suited for a test environment per se. However, it'll do just about everything that AutoIt can do. So it really comes down to which has a better API for your needs. I haven't used AutoIt with Ruby before, but Robot is a really easy class to use.

JRuby:
http://jruby.codehaus.org/
Robot class (built into Java):

···

On Aug 1, 2008, at 1:45 PM, James Britt wrote:

Axel Etzold wrote:

Dear all,
I have around 50 files which I need to open in an external (Windows) program, one after the other.
As each of them is about 100 MB larger, I'd like to automate the process.
The external application contains some data which are needed for the processing which I cannot
reproduce in another easy way.

Look at AutoItX, and google around for using the COM interface with Win32OLE for scripting via Ruby.

--
James Britt

www.happycamperstudios.com - Wicked Cool Coding
www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff