Program to click on a web page button ?

[HepDude]

Hi!

Is there a Windows (or DOS) program that will click on a button on a web page?

I have a cable modem that is "one way" and so it uses dialup for the upstream leg. The problem is that the cable provider uses a dialup line that is also used by regular dialup customers, and so it automatically disconnects every 6 hours.

I'm used to dealing with this by using Dialup Networking's capability to automatically redial when it disconnects, BUT in this case, the dialup is done internally in the cable modem.

There IS a web browser interface which allows me to click on "DIAL" from my PC, so I was hoping that I could just setup a Task to occur every 6 hours IF there is a Windows program that will automatically click on a button.

So, any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[dighn]

i doubt there is any existing program that does such a specific task

but something like this can be easily written with visual basic (or other languages but vb is the fastest)

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: dighn
(or other languages but vb is the fastest)

Doubtful.

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: dighn
(or other languages but vb is the fastest)

Doubtful.

I didn't mean fastest as in execution speed. I mean it would take the least amount of time to write because it involves a lot of COM stuff.

Sorry should have said it more clearly.

 

[BennyD]

vb = "sendkeys(vbcrlf)"

can't be much simpler than that

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: BennyD
vb = "sendkeys(vbcrlf)"

can't be much simpler than that

that's won't work unless the login page is constantly on in the foreground


a sure and entirely self-contained way is adding a browser object to the form, navigate it to the url, then through mshtml submit the form/whatever then quit the app. doesn't take more than a few minutes to write.

 

[BennyD]

then simply find the thread for the page, restore that then sendkeys

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: BennyD
then simply find the thread for the page, restore that then sendkeys

sure you could do that. either way it wouldn't take much time to do. though i'd prefer a self contained solution myself

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: dighn

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: dighn
(or other languages but vb is the fastest)

Doubtful.

I didn't mean fastest as in execution speed. I mean it would take the least amount of time to write because it involves a lot of COM stuff.

Sorry should have said it more clearly.

No -- I meant it's doubtful that it would be the fastest to write. And using COM seems pretty backwards to me, all you need to do is send a certain POST request to a url. ( I don't know what you meant by using COM, using it to control IE? or using it to access sockets? neither should be necessary).

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

No -- I meant it's doubtful that it would be the fastest to write. And using COM seems pretty backwards to me, all you need to do is send a certain POST request to a url. ( I don't know what you meant by using COM, using it to control IE? or using it to access sockets? neither should be necessary).

well it's extremely easy to do if you use the ie control. how easy? basically the following two lines of code is all you need:

browser.navigate "url goes here"
browser.document.forms(0).submit

what I meant by using COM is that the ie browser interface is COM-based. since visual basic is designed to use COM, using the interface would be extremely simple whereas in a langauge like C++, a lot more code is needed.


apparently there are a lot of ways to accomplish this but since I've been doing some work extending IE(mainly in C++ but makes no difference here) this method came as more natural/easy to me.

 

[jonmullen]

well how about

browser.navigate "url to submit to?corretquerystring"...less code and can be acomplishen just as easily in almost any language.

 

[dighn]

sure if it's a "GET" method form

 

[Coldfusion]

WinRunner can do this, though it may be out of your price range