Is there a PC equivalent to AppleScript?

September 25, 2006 9:16 AM

Is there a Windows scripting language that is equivalent to AppleScript?

I've written an AppleScript script, that is basically an automated clicker in Safari. It uses the "do Javascript" command to evaluate a web page to decide where to click, and also does some other actions outside of Safari. I'd like to write the same kind of program on the multiple PCs that we have at work, but I don't know what the equivalent language is in Windows. Can anyone tell me where to begin looking and what good resources there are for Windows programming?

posted by hooray to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

The closest thing for Windows is, I think, AutoIt or AutoHotKey.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:19 AM on September 25, 2006

Best answer: If you want to automate a web browser on a Windows PC, I would strongly suggest Watir. It's a free, open source IE automation framework that uses Ruby and is very easy to work with.
posted by subclub at 9:25 AM on September 25, 2006 [2 favorites]

Scripts can use COM to get programmatic access in the same way that AppleScripts use Apple events. Unfortunately, I don't think good scriptable COM interfaces are as pervasive in the Windows world.

If an application is scriptable like this, you can use any language with COM bindings (e.g. Visual Basic, Python, C#) to script it. If not, you'll need to hack something together with AutoHotKey.
posted by grouse at 9:26 AM on September 25, 2006

You can script Firefox by writing an extension, which is primarily Javascript (and some XUL, but not much). That may or may not be what you're looking for - it's more limited than using COM bindings, but also quite a bit simpler.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 9:42 AM on September 25, 2006

For a very sophisticated full-fledged automation solution with its own scripting language, you might consider Automate.
posted by shivohum at 10:38 AM on September 25, 2006