0

I'm not sure if this question is entirely appropriate for SO but it seemed to work better here than in SuperUser so apologies if its in the wrong place. Happy to move it if so.

I'm trying to figure out how I'd automate the input of data into a system that didn't accept data uploads, but rather used forms put up on a screen. Use cases are e.g. where an enterprise wide system does accept uploads but the user lacks admin rights to fill in data she is required to populate, or with very old and specialized legacy systems where the functionality just doesn't exist and a serial input-review-rollback-commit cycle is enforced.

I'm not a programmer by trade so this is partly thought experiment but also to answer a question that has arisen at a business that I'm involved in.

I'm reasonably familiar with python and java if libraries for keyboard emulation exist but would be happy interpreting a pseudo code response too.

Responses that point to existing providers of such functionality that is embeddable or that tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree also gratefully accepted.

Once again apologies as I know this isnt intuitively the best spot for this. Please do point me to a better location if you know of one.

Thanks

Tahnoon Pasha
  • 5,848
  • 14
  • 49
  • 75

1 Answers1

1

Possible solutions exist but they're all pretty bad

Is it a desktop application or a web application? If it's a web application you can use ghost.py to automate the interaction and submission of new records/entries. This work will be a glorious bundle of fun for the lucky code jockey who draws the short straw.

If it's a desktop application, it will be a great deal more difficult. Is it on Windows? Linux? MacOSX? Is the software written in Java? Using the Swing toolkit? AWT? SWT?

If it is a native Windows application you might be able to use Autohotkey to automate desktop interaction. This can be as basic as automatic clicks in pre-recorded parts of the screen, automating TAB keypresses to move around the input cells and reading input text from a data file and writing that out into the input cells. This will be even more entertaining than the web-solution mentioned earlier: truly the necessary ingredients for an authentic war story worthy of the annals of internet lore.

This is likely to be a lot of intricate work, error-prone, and subject to failure in the future if the UI of the software is changed; and such changes are very likely. It would be a lot easier to help if you could add more detail to the question.

Before embarking down this road, if I were you I would beg and plead with the software vendor to either provide me with an upload API; I would even offer to pay the vendor to upload my data for me. I cannot imagine either of the solutions I mentioned will be any cheaper, unless the work time of your developers has no value.

Good luck.

Caleb Hattingh
  • 9,005
  • 2
  • 31
  • 44
  • Thanks @cjrh , A useful answer. So I'm taking away its hard, will depend on the platform, is do-able but rarely worth the bother. The business where this has come up provides middleware to financial services companies. In one instance, we have a system that has an exceptionally unwieldy UI that takes ages to navigate... – Tahnoon Pasha May 25 '14 at 11:06
  • Users have to populate with regular frequency, and while sysadmins can upload flat files to update, don't wish to do so. In remote offices they'd like to see if they can produce a csv instead, or have us produce a more intuitive UI, and then have it populate the system automagically. Since the firm crowdsources/contracts for all programmers developer time is extremely valuable. It sounds like the right approach that you're suggesting for most use cases will be to try and negotiate upload rights to the system. – Tahnoon Pasha May 25 '14 at 11:06
  • In almost all circumstances the user systems I'm thinking of (outside this use case too) will be Windows, the middleware will sit on Linux servers on the network, and the Windows environment will be a terminal to a MS Server Stack somewhere on the network although occasionally it could be through to a DB2 /400 instance somewhere.. Thanks again for responding. – Tahnoon Pasha May 25 '14 at 11:07
  • So if your interface is in Windows, and the complexity of data entry is low, you can probably get away with Autohotkey. But I would strongly recommend obtaining upload access, or perhaps getting a REST interface where you could upload JSON or similar. – Caleb Hattingh May 25 '14 at 23:48