Doug Murphy
dw-murphy at cox.net
Mon Dec 13 10:35:04 CST 2010
If you use a hosting company that supports ASP.NET it is almost a given that
they will provide SQL Server.
-----Original Message-----
From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 7:34 AM
To: Discussion concerning Visual Basic and related programming issues.
Subject: Re: [dba-VB] Web page manipulation
The "clients" are tiny and completely non-technical. One is a non-profit
that assists people with disabilities to find service providers and other
assistance. They have about a half dozen people that work for them, meeting
the people needing assistance, usually in that person's home. The database
will be a dozen or so tables and is basically just for hours worked kind of
stuff.
The other "client" is a prison ministry which has lists of programs they
provide in the prisons, volunteers, churches and pastors. Again, as hand
full of volunteers that need to get at this information and maintain it,
again working out of their homes.
Both applications need to hit a database over the internet, and are pretty
much simple data entry and some reporting.
Both are sure to grow but I need to just get the basics up and running,
hopefully fairly rapidly. I have no control over the web hosting. Very
likely I will need to use MySQL since that is almost universal for web
hosting sites, so if they have a web site already, that will almost
certainly be available.
Access just seems to be a bad fit for these, and I have zero knowledge even
about how to set up the MySQL database, connect to it etc.
I have a web site that provides me with these services, already paid for and
which I could use initially at least to get set up and running, and up to
speed knowledge wise. Eventually I will need to move the data out to their
own web hosting if I can.
John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com
On 12/13/2010 4:48 AM, Mark Breen wrote:
> Hello John
>
> Another choice is to use Sillennium<http://seleniumhq.org/>
>
> It is built for this task and will allow you to easily change your
> library of routines when your website changes.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>
> On 10 December 2010 22:33, Drew Wutka<DWUTKA at marlow.com> wrote:
>
>> Now for a little more info for you. Yes, you can certainly do this.
>> Technically, it's not much different than if someone handed you an
>> .mde, and asked you to automate tasks in the mde (so you couldn't
>> tweak the source code running the program itself, but you could open
>> the mde with VBA, and use the objects within it just like you'd use
>> the objects in your own application.)
>>
>> Trick #1: Just like with an .mde, you have to have a reference to
>> the database itself, so with a browser, you need a reference to it.
>> You can either programmatically open a browser window (so you'll both
>> create the object, and have a reference to it), or you can ask the
>> user which browser window they want you to use (so you can grab the
>> browser window through code).
>>
>> Here's an example of how to grab an existing browser window:
>>
>> Function GetExistingBrowser(strKey As String) Dim SWs As New
>> SHDocVw.ShellWindows Dim IE As SHDocVw.InternetExplorer Dim mdie As
>> InternetExplorer Dim Resp For Each IE In SWs
>> Resp = MsgBox("Do you want to select: "& vbCrLf& vbCrLf&
>> IE.LocationName& vbCrLf& vbCrLf& IE.LocationURL, vbYesNo +
>> vbQuestion, "Select IE")
>> If Resp = vbYes Then
>> Set mdie = Nothing
>> Set mdie = IE.Application
>> NewSormDataEntry strKey, mdie
>> Exit Function
>> End If
>> Next
>> End Function
>>
>> The 'NewSormDataEntry' function is the function I am sending the mdie
>> object too (the referenced browser window). In this function strKey
>> is the primary key of a record that will be used in that
>> NewSormDataEntry to submit data into a web site.
>>
>> Trick #2: Just like when the development world got a wedgie when
>> Microsoft 'secured' Outlook from programs just using it to send
>> email, web security can be a real pain in doing something like this.
>> The security is put in place to impede (note, I didn't say prevent) a
>> hacker from doing nasty stuff to the site. So the 'impeding' garbage
>> designed to trip up hackers can get in the way of a legitimate
>> developer trying to create a helpful tool. So before you COMMIT to
>> being able to make the tool, you'll need to look at the site itself,
>> to see what all will get in your way.
>>
>> Trick #3: There are two ways to 'find' the objects you will need
>> your code to work with. The first is to just look at the HTML of the
>> page(s) you are going to manipulate. This is where some of those
'impediments'
>> come into play. Some sites prevent you from right clicking on a page
>> and selecting 'View Source'. Ironically, this is just removing a
>> 'shortcut' way to view the HTML source behind a page. It doesn't
>> actually HIDE the source, because your browser is viewing the source,
>> it has too, otherwise it will have nothing to display. So there are
>> multiple ways to 'download' the HTML you can view yourself. Create
>> your own browser, and dump the HTML to a file. You can also use API
>> calls to just directly download the HTML, without a browser. If the
>> page is derived from internal (on the website server) variables,
>> you'll need to use your own browser to get there and download the
>> source. The second way to 'find' the objects you need to deal with
>> are with the object browser. Running your code in debug mode, you'll
>> be able to see the browser object, and all of it's child elements.
>>
>> Trick #4: Events and properties. Setting the value of a textbox, or
>> clicking a button, just requires that you know what the events and
>> properties of those objects are. I use the MSDN that came with the
>> developer edition of Office 2000. It's got a nice HTML guide with
>> common HTML form elements, their properties, methods, and events.
>> But all that information is also plastered all over the web.
>>
>> Trick #5: When a page loads, the browser object is there, but you
>> may not be able to capture 'download complete' events. What I have
>> done in these cases, where my code puts in data on a page, clicks a
>> button to go to the next page, I put my code in a loop, that sits and
>> waits for an object from the next page to exist.
>>
>> Of course, if there are applets, or flash media elements, required
>> for interaction... can't help ya there, haven't tackled one of those.
>>
>> Drew
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>> [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
>> Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 3:30 PM
>> To: VBA
>> Subject: [dba-VB] Web page manipulation
>>
>> My client has to go through a process where he clicks about 20 - 30
>> things to manage to get a file downloaded. It sounded totally
>> convoluted but the question is (and I have asked this before without
>> a usable response) can I programmatically manipulate web pages to
>> cause specific pages to open, click buttons, input data into controls
>> etc.
>>
>> --
>> John W. Colby
>> www.ColbyConsulting.com
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