When your IT department fails you Web Scraping with AutoHotkey can save the day!

web scraping with AutoHotkey

One of my clients has over 3,000 videos on their website.  Amazingly nobody in their IT department can provide a holistic file with metadata like: Title, # of views, Length, Format, Tags, etc.  How crazy is that?   After contacting their video hosting company, nobody could (would) share this information!

Web Scraping with AutoHotkey to the rescue!

I wrote web scraping with AutoHotKey script that first got a list of all the videos, then looped over them and extracted various attributes about each video.  Not an ideal way to get this, but the client was manually going to go through this by cutting & pasting from their browse.

Save a ton of time by creating a syntax writer that writes your code for you!

AutoHotKey syntax writer

Syntax Writer

While fun, writing code can be very tedious in that it needs to be in a specific format. I use hotstrings to replace words I frequently use but what I also realized is I often have to put parameters into specific format like a quote encapsulated/comma delimited list.

This video shows how I wrote some very simple code that makes it much easier for me to be more productive in my SQL code writing.  I have other syntax writers for other languages but the concept stays the same.

 

Ever want to share the clipboard between computers? Now you can!

share the clipboard

Share the clipboard

I wrote a small program with AHK that allows you to share the clipboard with another computer (regardless of where it is).   Sometimes I’m using my laptop and copy & then want to paste on my desktop while other times I’m collaborating with my friend in Denmark.  Either case is simple for me.  All I have to do on one computer is copy it to the clipboard. The other computer can simply paste and the text (or file if you’re in Windows Explorer) will be pasted!

The only requirement is to have a folder that is shared between them. (Use services like Dropbox or Google Drive or a network drive if you are at work. It has been tested on Win XP, Win 7, Win 8 and Windows 10.

Overall Explanation / Review:

How to use ClipShare:

https://youtu.be/N-ku9XCSEs8