Automate HTML File Upload Control - Tutorial (1)

If you ever tried to programatically change the value of a HTML File Upload Control you probably noticed that <input type="file" /> element is read-only! This happens for good security reasons: web pages scripts should not be able to upload random files without user consent. Unfortunatelly the control is read-only for browser extensions and add-ons too (BHO, toolbars, side bars, etc).

For IE6 and IE7 the upload control may be automated by setting the focus to "Internet Explorer_Server" window and generating Win32 keyboard events. For IE8, the upload control is read-only, the user can only set a value by pressing "Browse" button and choosing a file.

With Twebst Automation Studio, automating HTML File Upload Control can't be easier. Here's a short VBScript sample of doing it:

Option Explicit
Dim core
Dim browser
Set core = CreateObject("Twebst.Core")
Set browser = core.StartBrowser("http://www.2shared.com/")

Call browser.FindElement("input file", "id=upField").InputText("C:\somepath\photo1.jpg")

Get Twebst Automation Studio Free Edition!

New Web Macro Recorder released!

After several months of complete radio silence, things have been moving forward for Twebst Library which turned into a more powerful and mature product.
Please welcome Twebst Web Automation Studio!

Twebst Automation Studio is an advanced web automation framework for Internet Explorer that can be used within any environment that supports COM, from scripting languages (JScript, VBScript) to high level programming languages (C#, VB.Net, C++).

The framework includes two components: Twebst Web Recorder that automatically generates most of the automation code and Twebst Library which is a collection of programable objects that creates a web automation API.

But one image is better than thousand words...

Twebst Web Recorder features:

• Easily create web macros through an intuitive graphical interface.
• Generate web automation code using the language of your choice: JScript, VBScript, C#, VB.Net, C++
• Record web actions on all HTML controls (button, combo-box, list-box, edit-box)

And one more thing: FREE version available!

Download Twebst Automation Studio

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Web Data Extraction with C++ Web Macro

Web data extraction or web scraping can be implemented in various ways. Today I will use Twebst Web Automation Library to extract search results from Google using DOM parsing method and Internet Explorer automation (you need to install Twebst Library first).

Here are the steps that C++ web macro will perform in order to extract results from Google search:

• Open an Internet Explorer browser and navigate to Google site.
• Find the search edit box and fill out the word to search.
• Find the submit button and click it.
• Wait until the page is loaded and find a DIV with id=res
• Find the collection of all H3 elements inside the DIV element.
• Extract the text and URL and display it.

Enough talk! Let the code speak for itself.

// Start a new Internet Explorer instance and navigate to a given URL.
IBrowserPtr pBrowser = pCore->StartBrowser("http://www.google.com/");

// Find search edit box in page and type some text into it.
IElementPtr pSearchEdit = pBrowser->FindElement("input text", SearchCondition("name=q"));
pSearchEdit->InputText("codecentrix");

// Find search button and click it.
IElementPtr pSearchBtn = pBrowser->FindElement("input submit", SearchCondition("text=Google Search"));
pSearchBtn->Click();

// Find the DIV element where the result are displayed.
IElementPtr pResultDiv = pBrowser->FindElement("div", SearchCondition("id=res"));

// Get all found results and print them in console.
IElementListPtr pResultList = pResultDiv->FindAllElements("h3", SearchCondition());

// Display only the header result (text and url).
for (int i = 0; i < pResultList->length; ++i)
{
    // Get current H3 in the list.
    IElementPtr pCrntResult = pResultList->Getitem(i);

    // Find first and only anchor inside H3
    IElementPtr pCrntAnchor = pCrntResult->FindElement("a", SearchCondition());
    CComQIPtr<IHTMLAnchorElement> spCrntAnchor = pCrntAnchor->nativeElement;

    // Get URL from IHTMLAnchorElement.
    CComBSTR bstrURL = "";
    spCrntAnchor->get_href(&bstrURL);

    // Display results.
    wcout << pCrntResult->text << L"\n" << bstrURL.m_str << L"\n\n";
}

Download:

• CppMacro.zip (full source code and exe)
• Twebst Web Automation Library

IE Web Login Automation

One highly repetitive web task is the logon to a web site. This is a common scenario where Twebst Web Automation Library really shines. Here is a short web macro written in JScript language that automatically logs you on Yahoo Mail site. All you have to do is to replace "UUUUUUUUUU" and "PPPPPPPPPP" with your user name and password in the code below.

// Open a browser and navigate to yahoo mail login page.
var core = new ActiveXObject("Twebst.Core");
var browser = core.StartBrowser("https://login.yahoo.com/config/mail?.intl=us");

// Find login fields.
var u = browser.FindElement("input text");
var p = browser.FindElement("input password");
var s = browser.FindElement("input submit");

// Log on to site by filling the user-name and password fileds and then click submit boutton.
u.InputText("UUUUUUUUUU");
p.InputText("PPPPPPPPPP");
s.Click();

FindElement searches thru all frames/iframes hierarchy for the first input element of type text/password/submit. Additional conditions can be specified for search (like searching an element by id/name or any other HTML attribute). Search conditions can make use of regular expressions if needed.

One more important thing is that FindElement method waits for the web page to be completely loaded before searching the element (the timeout can be specified by using core.loadTimeout property). Read more about Twebst Library...

Download:

• Twebst Library Pro (it must be installed for the macro to work).


• YahooMail.js


• Script Of The Day system if you want to easily install more login templates.

Twebst Web Automation Library v1.40 released

Twebst version 1.40 is launched!
Main changes include IE8 compatibility, better support for working with embeded IE browser control, support for modal and modeless HTML dialogs and functions for clipboard access.

Here is the list of new features and enhancements:
- NEW: IE8 is now supported
- ENH: core.AttachToNative* methods work now with hosted IE browser control
- BUG: various fixes
- NEW: core.foregroundBrowser property
- NEW: core.productName property
- NEW: core.productVersion property
- NEW: core.GetClipboardText method
- NEW: core.SetClipboardText method
- NEW: core.AttachToWnd method
- NEW: core.NativeWindowToNativeBrowser method
- NEW: core.NativeWindowToNativeDocument method
- NEW: core.NativeWindowToNativeDocument
- NEW: browser.FindModalHtmlDialog method
- NEW: browser.FindModelessHtmlDialog method
- NEW: element.GetAttribute method
- NEW: element.SetAttribute method
- NEW: element.RemoveAttribute method
- NEW: element.tagName property
- NEW: element.FindParentElement method
- NEW: core.RightClick method-
- Find more ...

Free Download Twebst Library 1.40

Homemade Handcrafted Help System

A good documentation is very important for any serious project. It comes a moment in life, when programmers find themselves working on the help system. That is what happened to me during the later stages of Twebst Web Automation Library project. Even though this project is not open source, I try to make public as many parts of it as possible. Today I will present Twebst Help System and how this tedious and annoying task of creating it, was automated.

Twebst is a library of COM objects used to automate Internet Explorer browser. The objects and the supported properties and methods have to be documented . The page structure is the same for every object/method/property and it also contains code samples that need syntax highlighting. This is good news because it leaves a lot of place for templates and automation.

Here is the solution:

• The template is an XML document. When documenting an object/method or property the focus is on the content rather than on formatting the text. There is one XML file for each object/method/property.
• A WSH script written in jscript parses the XML document and adds syntax highlighting to sample code in the documentation page. Regular expression are used for parsing.
  
• cross references are added automatically by the same script.
  
• then a XSL transformation is applied to convert XML source to a HTML document that will be eventually written to disk.
• The whole process is optimized by removing unnecessary operations like generating the HTML when it already exists and is newer than its XML source.
• Finally the HTML documents refers a CSS style sheet to easily change the look.
  

It goes like this:
XML + JScript-> XML with color syntax and cross references + XSL -> HTML + CSS -> CHM

For local help, the CHM compiler is invoked as a final step and a CHM Help File is generated. All you have to do is launching Build.js script you may find in the archive below.

Downloads: TwebstHelp.zip

Prerequisites: In order to build the CHM file you'll need HTML Help Workshop from Microsoft.

SQL CE 3.5 SP1 and MSVCR80

I am involved in Web Replay (the best password manager on the market) development from its inception. Recently, we have upgraded SQL CE engine to the latest 3.5 SP1 version. Web Replay is built against Visual C++ runtime version 9 which is deployed by including Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) in the setup. But that was not enough because Microsoft SQL CE 3.5 SP1 depends on Visual C++ runtime version 8.0 which is NOT included in the redistributable kit!


If you encounter this problem you have no option but to include vc2005 redist in your setup. You could think that giving up the upgrade to 3.5 version and continuing using SQL CE 3.1 is an option. Well, it isn't! SQL CE 3.1 is crashing randomly on Windows XP SP3 (even Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio is reporting some memory corruption error before completely freezing).