Intelligent Macro?

February 8, 2007 10:04 AM

NerdyCodeFilter-I have a need to automate the filling of forms for a particular website, the issue is...that I need logic...

Basically I need to do successive registrations for the site in question. I've found a $500 macro program that will fill variables easily based on values from a CSV, but..well...it's $500.

Here's what I mean: Reg1 uses "username1", reg2 uses "username2". Preferably it would just incrementally number the accounts if it's not reading from a CSV. It also needs to randomly generate secure passwords, or read these passwords from the CSV.

So, I guess, ideally it could read from CSV, I could configure the accounts ahead of time and then I would have the pw's in the same place as the logins.

Any help? I'm not code stupid, I can parse php and c, but I said parse, not "code from scratch."

All the macro programs that google has turned up are too baseline, this isn't a normal recording. AutoIt might be able to do it I suppose, but some of the logic of that language seems hard to me.

posted by TomMelee to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I think you need to learn php & javascript (or another web language), or hire a coder that knows them. There really isn't any easy answer. Check out eLance to hire someone cheap... but your specification really isn't that clear, so I'd maybe polish that up quite a bit to be very clear about what you need before you go to a programmer with it.
posted by SpecialK at 10:31 AM on February 8, 2007

Best answer: Would the iMacros Firefox extension be useful?
posted by bkudria at 10:50 AM on February 8, 2007

Response by poster: @bkudria that would be the $500 package I looked at before, but as I really jump deep into it, it seems that it might be about right. Just before you wrote that I found the demo-loop-csv-2-web demo, I was thinking such functionality was gimped from the free version.

Still taking ideas, I don't immediately have oodles of time to dive into this script, but it does look like imacros will do the trick.
posted by TomMelee at 11:03 AM on February 8, 2007

Best answer: I would do it with perl and LWP. I'd set up the logic like this:

Open and read the CSV.

For each line in the CSV:
-Read a line from the CSV
-parse that into specific variables ($reg, $username, $pw)
-post $reg, $username, $pw to the URL that the form on the page would usually post to.
posted by nakedsushi at 12:00 PM on February 8, 2007

Response by poster: hmm that's a pretty good idea actually naked, hadn't thought about that. I'm fairly sure this puppy is all .asp though, so post variables aren't visible in the address bar.
posted by TomMelee at 12:42 PM on February 8, 2007

TomMelee if you're using Firefox, there's a handy little plugin that lets you see what variables are posted to where:

http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/
posted by nakedsushi at 1:01 PM on February 8, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks! I'll be working on this in earnest tonight.
posted by TomMelee at 1:43 PM on February 8, 2007

It sounds like a pretty easy job for Perl, as nakedsushi says. Specifically WWW::Mechanize, which I've used extensively for this kind of thing.

If you want a less-than-$500 solution, email me and I'll just do it for you and charge you less!
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:41 PM on February 8, 2007

Response by poster: Hehe, I'm looking for "free", lol. It's just me doing some bulk registration + pursing the thirst I always have for wanting to learn new, more effective ways to do...whatever. Thanks for the inputs tho.
posted by TomMelee at 3:48 PM on February 8, 2007

You can also do this with curl easily.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:27 PM on February 8, 2007

Automation Anywhere can do this.

It is $250. Or if your need is short term, there is on Demand license for $130.
posted by macro-automation at 1:37 PM on March 1, 2007