Can anyone help me automate?

[Cervantes]

Hi;
I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction here.
I have a webpage that we have to use to create client accounts on. Normally this is a one-at-a-time affair. Recently, the jobs have been getting bigger though, and now I just got a 400 account setup dropped on me!

What I'm looking for is a way to automate my entering this data. The page is always the same, it's standard HTML. I used VBA and SendKeys for the last big job, but it obviously isn't the greatest solution, and after 20-30 accounts (if I'm lucky) it would miss sending a tab key and go haywire (I loaded my data from a spreadsheet, went over to IE, and got Sendkeys to use keyboard navigation to put everything in).

So, the question is, what ways are better? The page is always the same, the navigation is always the same, I just need something that works all the time, not the %66 of the time that SendKeys does. Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can automate this (all client-side, I have no server-side access), either in IE or Firefox?

Thanks,
Cerv

 

[Xaqte]

Here is my suggestion (not server side).

Install perl or your favorite programming language and have it do the work.

The perl way:
1. import the excel file
2. for each account imported, have it go to the page you use and enter the account

I'm giving you a perl example, b/c that is my language of choice. I'm sure you could pick a different language if you want (but why ).

If your up to using perl:

Give the excel import a try yourself... I'm sure you will find info on google or here:

http://search.cpan.org/search?query=excel&mode=all

If you get stuck, post your code in the perl forum.

Once you've got that under your belt, automating the account entering should be easy. This is right up my alley and I'd be happy to help. I'd sugget the use of

http://WWW::Mechanize:

http://search.cpan.org/~petdance/WWW-Mechanize-1.18/lib/WWW/Mechanize.pm

Let us know your results!

X

 

[Diancecht]

Maybe you could ease the burden of navigation by constructing the URL with the query parameters, if that's the case.

Cheers,
Dian

 

[trollacious]

You already have Windows Scripting Host on your computer if you're running any version of Windows, and you could use VBScript or JScript to create and submit pages after reading the data file to get the information from.

Lee

 

[ingresman]

or if you knoe PHP you could use the CURL library to construct the calls you need. I'm sure ASP will have a similar library.