3 ms·

Selenium can be used for browser automation.

by noinsight 11y ago

hugs 11y ago
Yup, Selenium has been around since 2004, and is now the basis of the W3C standard [1] for browser automation. Most browser vendors now officially support the spec. (Disclosure: I started the Selenium project. AMA.) [1]: https://w3c.github.io/webdriver/webdriver-spec.html https://w3c.github.io/webdriver/webdriver-spec.html
Abundnce10 11y ago
I've used Selenium a bunch the last couple months to automate daily/hourly jobs to pull data from 3rd party UIs that don't offer an API. I couldn't imagine not having a tool like Selenium at my disposal!
- SchizoDuckie 11y ago
  Pro tip: create a chrome extension with permissions on all http:// http:// and https:// https:// sites, or run it through Node-Webkit/nw.io, then you can use the generic DOMParser and querySelectorAll with a pretty fluent interface on any site you can imagine. example here: https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/DuckieTV/blob/angular/js/utility.js#L45 https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/DuckieTV/blob/angular/js/uti...
  - vaviloff 11y ago
    > or run it through Node-Webkit/nw.io That's quite interesting! I thought node-webkit isn't suitable (yet) for such purpose. Could you go into more detail on how to do parsing/automation external sites with it?
    - SchizoDuckie 11y ago
      It's very suitable! (I'm using it in DuckieTV in production, works like a charm!) Basically, you can use xmlhttp to fetch any webpage becaused of relaxed restrictions. then use DOMParser (a built-in browser component, that you can even shim) to create a virtual DOM of that xmlhttp result, and execute regular querySelector and querySelectorAlll queries on that :)
r14n 11y ago
I ran into a problem with the automation project I was working on when I tried using Selenium. I was trying to print (shipping labels from Amazon) and Selenium (at least Chrome webdriver) can't see the print dialog :( Any ideas?

3 ms·

Selenium can be used for browser automation.

by noinsight 11y ago

Selenium can be used for browser automation.

hugs 11y ago
Yup, Selenium has been around since 2004, and is now the basis of the W3C standard [1] for browser automation. Most browser vendors now officially support the spec. (Disclosure: I started the Selenium project. AMA.) [1]: https://w3c.github.io/webdriver/webdriver-spec.html https://w3c.github.io/webdriver/webdriver-spec.html
Abundnce10 11y ago
I've used Selenium a bunch the last couple months to automate daily/hourly jobs to pull data from 3rd party UIs that don't offer an API. I couldn't imagine not having a tool like Selenium at my disposal!
- SchizoDuckie 11y ago
  Pro tip: create a chrome extension with permissions on all http:// http:// and https:// https:// sites, or run it through Node-Webkit/nw.io, then you can use the generic DOMParser and querySelectorAll with a pretty fluent interface on any site you can imagine. example here: https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/DuckieTV/blob/angular/js/utility.js#L45 https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/DuckieTV/blob/angular/js/uti...
  - vaviloff 11y ago
    > or run it through Node-Webkit/nw.io That's quite interesting! I thought node-webkit isn't suitable (yet) for such purpose. Could you go into more detail on how to do parsing/automation external sites with it?
    - SchizoDuckie 11y ago
      It's very suitable! (I'm using it in DuckieTV in production, works like a charm!) Basically, you can use xmlhttp to fetch any webpage becaused of relaxed restrictions. then use DOMParser (a built-in browser component, that you can even shim) to create a virtual DOM of that xmlhttp result, and execute regular querySelector and querySelectorAlll queries on that :)
r14n 11y ago
I ran into a problem with the automation project I was working on when I tried using Selenium. I was trying to print (shipping labels from Amazon) and Selenium (at least Chrome webdriver) can't see the print dialog :( Any ideas?