Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

If you are automating web pages or web applications you may at some point need to automate dialog boxes produced by client side script, like the one that pops up when you click the link below:

Confirm Popup

So you might want to be aware that the title of these popups varies between different versions of Internet Explorer. In IE6 it was “Microsoft Internet Explorer”. In IE7 it is “Windows Internet Explorer” and in IE8 it is now “Message from webpage”.

I much prefer the last one from an automation point of view since it differs significantly from the title of the main IE window which usually contains the phrase “Microsoft Internet Explorer” in IE7 and “Windows Internet Explorer” in IE8.

So if we wanted to click on the Yes button if we were writing a script for IE8 we could use the following code:

SetFocus>Message from webpage
Press Enter

But what if we didn’t know what version of IE our script would be automating? If you were giving your script to someone else or putting it on some other PC you may not know what version of IE was being used. What we need to do is make the script find out what version of IE is installed on the computer.

Here’s how to make the script determine which version of IE is in use:

RegistryReadKey>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer,Version,IEver
Separate>IEVER,.,bits
Let>IEVER=bits_1

IEVER now contains the major version number of Internet Explorer.

So we could now use this to define the title we expect from the dialog box and confirm it:

RegistryReadKey>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer,Version,IEver
Separate>IEVER,.,bits
Let>IEVER=bits_1

Let>dialogTitle_IE6=Microsoft Internet Explorer
Let>dialogTitle_IE7=Windows Internet Explorer
Let>dialogTitle_IE8=Message from webpage

SetFocus>dialogTitle_IE%IEVER%
Press Enter

Of course this is all assuming you’re using the English version of Internet Explorer. I cannot vouch for other languages.

Twice today, for two different people, I needed to write some code to iterate through files in a tree of subfolders. The subfolder structure could not be known up front and there may be any number of subfolders and any number of folders deep.

One could use GetDirList iteratively, or use VBScript’s FileSystem Object. But then I was reminded of the power of DOS by JRL in this post.

The following returns a file containing a list of the jpg files throughout all folders, starting in c:\root_folder\ with full paths:

dir c:\root_folder\*.jpg /s /b > outputfile.txt

So, as JRL suggests, we can call that command from Macro Scheduler and then read in the output file. We should use a temporary file:

Let>RP_WINDOWMODE=2
Let>RP_WAIT=1
Run>cmd /c dir c:\root_folder\*.jpg /s /b > %TEMP_DIR%~temp_dir_list~
ReadFile>%TEMP_DIR%~temp_dir_list~,dir_list

Now we can explode that list into an array and loop through it, doing whatever it is we need to do to each file:

Separate>dir_list,CRLF,files
If>files_count>0
Let>f=0
Repeat>f
  Let>f=f+1
  Let>this_file=files_%f%
  //do something with this_file
Until>f=files_count

It’s easy to forget the power of DOS – it can save you a fair few lines of code sometimes.

Remember that any DOS command can be “piped” to an output file by appending >filename to the command line. This is very useful as we can then use ReadFile to get the output from the command, as we have done above.

Gale Dyvig has just posted some code in the forums showing how to use the Microsoft Office Document Imaging OCR component to locate text on the screen, find its position and click on it. Very useful. You’ll find it here.

MODI is a component that comes with Microsoft Office. You need to ensure Microsoft Office Document Imaging and Office Shared Features / Proofing Tools is installed in Office Tools.

Thanks Gale!