Web automation

[qwweeeit at yahoo.it]

Hi Mike,
thank you very much for your reply.
I know that mine could be considered
> a "very" silly way to define automation.
but I'm not a purist nor a professional
programmer.
Besides that, I know that case by case
every problem can be solved and in more
"right" way, also in very difficult environments
(framed, Javascript heavy pages) ... but not by me!

I must confess: before pressing manually 220 times a
"Next" button and save the data sent by the
html server (using simply cut/paste), I tried to use
shell programming, DCOP etc., but in the end
I reverted to the "by hand" method...

Perhaps if I were an expert like you, I could have
programmed a small script in a matter of minutes.

Only after a week I found the solution (twill) but
I have discovered that also this solution obliges
to consider every case and program the script
accordingly (to not mentioning the need of
disguising it as a browser).
On the other end, the "cheating" method doesn't
assure a 100% success, because the html servers can
have a high degree of "cleverness".

If I would cut out all automatic queries from my server,
I would also time between them to see if the stream
of queries ("apparently" coming from a browser) are
indeed compatible with a browser operated by a
human being...

For all this reasons, reluctantly, I am going back to Windows
and its macro languages.

Unfortunately in Windows there are many more security problems...

If you have a "general" solution for the X world...

While I was posting the reply to Mike I saw the last
contribution of Paul Boddie.
>From what he says I infer that he is a Windows programmer
(OutlookExplorer).
In Windows I have no problems (a part security) to program
"dirty" automation scripts!
But I have a doubt... how my Windows theory accords
with DCOP and KDE?
Bye.