In this video we discuss why Rufaydium has so much potential, some of the things we hope it has built into it, and the alternatives like Chrome.ahk and Selenium.
Automate Chrome with Rufaydium and AutoHotkey First Tutorial
Our first Rufaydium tutorial we walk through how to set it up and how to Automate Chrome with Rufaydium
How to use a Chrome Profile with Rufaydium and AutoHotkey
Notes from Create and connect to new Chrome profiles with AutoHotkey
00:09 There’s been a lot of confusion on Chrome profiles. What they are, why you should concern yourself with them when using AutoHotkey.
00:23 Your Chrome profile is what keeps you logged into websites, connected to Google, etc. Most of the time you won’t need access to your entire Chrome profile. But you might want to start with a blank slate if you’re distributing your code to people. Or you want to create a new instance of Chrome that you don’t want attached to an existing Chrome tab. For any of those, you need to have a Chrome profile
01:17 This is because most people don’t have the remote debugging flag on their default shortcut. If you launch chrome with debugging code, it will automatically group it with the current process window.
02:38 So instead of spawning a new Chrome window that is listening to the debug window, it will open a new page on the existing Chrome instance without the debugging access (even though you specified debugging)
02:52 So in order to get Chrome to open a new instance, you need to use the Chrome profile.
03:51 Create a folder (name it what you want) and tell Chrome to use it the profile flag. “–user data-dir” with your directory i.e. “–user data-dir-C:\temp\newProfile”
05:18 Looking in the profile folder, you can see Chrome has generated a bunch of files. Things like Cookies, browser history, etc. Everything Chrome remembers…
05:47 If you’re targeting portable Chrome, making sure you have this profile set correctly can be a big deal! If you use AutoHotkey to launch portable Chrome, it might still load the default profile. Make sure you specify the Chrome profile!
07:32 Everywhere you would have used Chrome. In your script, use ChromeInst. (i.e. Instead of Chrome.GetPage use ChromeInst.GetPage.
07:32 That tells Chrome to look for this new / specific instance of Chrome instead of the default version. Remember, it’s only “new” right after you make it.
Here we continue with GeekDude working with Chrome and AutoHotkey extracting data from a webpage. This session we focus on getting lists and leverage JSON, Chrome.Jxon_Dump, JSON.stringify, Chrome.Jxon_Load and jQuery.
The great news is that GeekDude explained how we can see the Reddit site the way it was the below video!
AutoHotkey script for Automating Chrome to Set Text & Click a button
#Include ;Remember to put Chrome in your library folder
#SingleInstance,Force
;**************************************
page:=Chrome.GetPageByTitle("AutoHotkey Community","contains") ;This will connect to the second index of a specific tab
If !IsObject(page){
MsgBox % "That wasn' t object / the page wasn't found"
ExitApp
}
page.Evaluate("document.querySelector('#keywords').value ='Chrome.ahk'")
Variable =document.querySelector('#keywords').value ='Chrome.ahk'
page.Evaluate(Variable)
var:="duh"
page.Evaluate("document.querySelector('#keywords').value ='" var "'")
page.Evaluate("document.querySelector('#search > fieldset > button').value ='Chrome.ahk'")
Notes for Automating Chrome to Set Text & Click a button
00:36 Go to AutoHotkey.com/boards/
00:44 Connect to tab using Chrome.GetPageByTitle(“AutoHotkey Community”) ;the default matchtype is “starts with”
01:23 Look at page structure using right-click and Inspect. This opends Devtools with that element selected.
01:46 It has an ID of “keywords”, copy js path. Which will give you queryselector(“#keywords”)
02:26 Use the .value to set some text in that box.
04:01 Make sure inside the JavaScript you use the “=”, not “:=”
04:15 Some people don’t want to have to learn JavaScript. When using Chrome, you’re going to have to learn JavaScript.
04:56 When using Chrome.ahk, we’re injecting JavaScript. So best to learn
05:54 The button is right next to the input. You can go back to the page and right-click the button, then hit Inspect
06:13 Test the new js path. Instead of using .value, use .click
06:42 Test in Chrome developer tool
07:18 When running an Evaluate method, it waits for the previous Evaluate to finish (so no need to sleep between them).
07:44 If you run into a problem where you think it is happening too quickly, check the forum for some solutions
08:40 Sometimes what you want to input won’t always be a static string. If you’re trying to reference a variable, you need to use the expression syntax. In an expression, you’re not just assigning text, you’re doing math or making function calls.
page.Evaluate(“document.querySelector(‘#keywords’).value ='” var “‘”) “‘”)
10:48 This works because AutoHotkey splits everything up on a given line. First is a name of a function, then says this is inside the function, then this is text inside a function. Then builds from left to right as to the string that will be used.
12:15 AutoHotkey proceeds left to right when evaluating an expression
12:40 when you use := you’re in expression assignment mode.
13:25 With just single = you’re in plain-text mode. It reads it as text
15:00 When automating a site, you don’t know what kind of buffer’s they have to prevent scraping / botting.
15:49 When you start automating, you might start seeing Captcha’s everywhere
16:04 Sites get really good at looking like a normal site to a user, but looking like an impenetrable fortress to code
16:36 If your variable contains a single quote or other special charachters, JavaScript will interpret it as code instead of text.
Not mentioned in Video but GeekDude wrote me after
You can escape JavaScript code using Coco’s JSON library does actually do that escaping that we discussed when talking about putting data on the page. The syntax for invoking it looks like this:
In this short video GeekDude walks us through why we need to consider Chrome profiles and how to create / use them.
automate setting text in a search field and then hitting the button to submit the search.
