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
A while back someone wrote me saying how IE is dead and wondering how we can automate other browsers. While IE is definitely on it’s death-bed, I do still automate IE for sites that will let IE load. Someone mentioned that Windows 11 completely removes Internet Explorer thus, if you’re running Windows 11, automating IE is not an option. I looked into this and had some very interesting discoveries:
The IWB2 Learner tool works within Edge when in “IE Mode”
In Windows 11, you can add IE back and still use it in IE mode. (I’ll document how I did this in a later video)
When I realized the above, I played with Edge (in IE Mode) in Windows 10 & Windows 11 and was able to connect to the DOM! Granted my approach sucked but I asked Tank (Charlie Simmons) to take a look at it and he borrowed on the concept and re-wrote what i did into something that is decentily reliable. You can get the download here
Here’s a video showing how I use AutoHotkey to Automate IE from within Edge!
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:
While AutoHotkey is an amazing tool for Web Scraping, many people complain about being limited to connecting with COM to IE. In the below videos I walk through how you can use AutoHotkey and Selenium to automate web scraping in virtually any browser you wish. 🙂
Update: 5/19/2020– While to the best of my knowledge Selenium still works, when automating Chrome, I recommend using GeekDude’s Chrome class. I have some examples of working with an older version of his Chrome class here.
Installing Selenium
In order to control Selenium with AutoHotkey you need to install the SeleniumBasic. The current version is 2.09.0 and can be downloaded here. Selenium is now on version 3 and there is a new SeleniumBasic version promised to be released soon which will connect to version 3 of Selenium. Make sure you download the WebDrivers of choice for your browsers.
If all of this sounds confusing, don’t feel bad. It is ridculous! I found this post which documents/clarifies much of the confusion (although Selenium 3 is now out)
Please note several people reported when installing Selenium Basic it did not install in the program files location (i.e. here: C:\Program Files\SeleniumBasic or C:\Program Files (x86)\SeleniumBasic). They also had problems getting Selenium to launch. I recommend you make sure Selenium installs into one of the Program Files location and also make sure you get the Selenium drivers installed. After install I had the following files on my computer:
C:\Program Files\SeleniumBasic\operadriver.exe
C:\Program Files\SeleniumBasic\chromedriver.exe
C:\Program Files\SeleniumBasic\edgedriver.exe
C:\Program Files\SeleniumBasic\iedriver.exe
After installing the Selenium Basic- Make sure you get the latest Chrome driver here and extract the “chromedriver.exe” into the folder where SeleniumBasic is installed. Also keeping your Chrome version up to date. Currently I’m running 64.0.3282.39 64-bit version of Chrome and am using a 32-bit version of Selenium Webdriver (as there is no 64 bit version of Selenium webdriver).
Here are some links you might want to review (but you’ll need to adapt them for your purposes)
Send keys to value: ;Need to add “driver” e.g. .SendKeys(driver.Keys.ENTER)
Tutorial showing how to start up and navigate with AutoHotkey and Selenium
Getting information from a page with Selenium and AutoHotkey
While there are a lot of similarities to data extraction in Selenium, there are quite a few differences as well. The below code is what I use in the following video. It demonstrates some ways that you can extract data from a web page via Selenium and AutoHotkey.
Selenium and AutoHotkey are pretty different in how you set information. Selenium has a “sendkeys” method which seems to be pretty reliable at triggering events on a page.
Make sure you review this: Send keys to value: ;Note: you need to add “driver” e.g. .SendKeys(driver.Keys.ENTER)
driver:= ComObjCreate("Selenium.CHROMEDriver") ;Chrome driver
driver.Get("https://the-automator.com/")
;~ !!!!DO NOT USE!!! driver.findElement(By.id("search_form_input_homepage")).SendKeys("hello") ; Java bindings of Selenium. !!!!DO NOT USE!!!
driver.findElementsByName("s").item[2].SendKeys("hello world")
driver.findElementsByName("s").item[2].SendKeys(driver.Keys.ENTER) ;http://seleniumhome.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-to-press-keyboard-in-selenium.html
MsgBox pause
driver.executeScript("arguments[0].setAttribute('value', 'hello world')", driver.findElementsByName("s")) ;sets value
driver.findElementsByName("cat").item[2].SendKeys("hello world")
driver.findElementsByName("cat").item[1].click() ;1 based, not zero
Setting text & clicking items on a page with Selenium and AutoHotkey
Using your Chrome Profile (Avoiding the need to re-login to a site)
In this video I demonstrate how you can leverage your Chrome profile so you do not need to keep logging into a website with Chrome
driver:= ComObjCreate("Selenium.CHROMEDriver") ;Chrome driver
; put this "chrome://version/" in the url in chrome to find path to profile
;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25779027/load-default-chrome-profile-with-webdriverjs-selenium
driver.SetProfile("H:\Temp\Chrome\Cache\cache\Default") ; 'Full path of the profile directory
url:="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?trk="
driver.Get(url)
Iterating over Objects with Selenium and AutoHotkey
In the below video I demonstrate some of the important differences when iterating over objects with Selenium and AutoHotkey. A COM based object does not have an enumerator thus you cannot simply use a for-loop to iterate over them. Selenium does does have an enumerator however the objects are held in the Keys (not the values).
pwb := WBGet()
obj:=pwb.document.GetElementsByName("s") ;.length
for k, v in obj
MsgBox % v.outerHTML
loop, % obj.length
COM_Data.= a_index a_tab obj[a_index-1].outerhtml "`n" ;zero based
SciTE_Output(COM_Data) ;Text,Clear=1,LineBreak=1,Exit=0 ;https://the-automator.com/scite-output-pane/
MsgBox pause
^t::
driver:= ComObjCreate("Selenium.IEDriver") ;Chrome driver
driver.Get("https://the-automator.com/")
;~ MsgBox % driver.FindElementsByName("s").Length ; does not work
MsgBox % driver.FindElementsByName("s").Count ;need to use count
obj:=driver.FindElementsByName("s")
for k,v in obj {
;~ MsgBox % IsObject(v) a_tab v
Selenium_Data.= a_index a_tab k a_tab k.Attribute("outerHTML") "`n"
}
SciTE_Output(Selenium_Data,1) ;Text,Clear=1,LineBreak=1,Exit=0
Demo video showing how to iterate over objects in Selenium
Various Selenium methods for getting & setting data on a page
In this tutorial I walk through various ways to get/set data on a page. With Selenium you can use both CSS and Xpath which are like QuerySelector.
I also shared these two resources from Michael Sorens which present the same data
driver:= ComObjCreate("Selenium.CHROMEDriver") ;Chrome driver
driver.Get("https://the-automator.com/")
MsgBox,,ByTag name-Just first,% driver.findElementByTag("P").Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByTag (name)-(just first)
MsgBox,,ByTag name-First in Array,% driver.findElementsByTag("P").item[1].Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByTag (name)-Array
MsgBox,,ByID ,% driver.findElementByID("site-description").Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByID
MsgBox,,ByName-Just First ,% driver.findElementByName("s").Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByName (Just first)
MsgBox,,ByName (array),% driver.findElementsByName("s").item[2].Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByName- array- 2nd
MsgBox,,ByClass-First,% driver.findElementByClass("entry-title").Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByClass - (Just first)
MsgBox,,ByClass-Array,% driver.findElementsByClass("entry-title").item[2].Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByClass - Array
MsgBox,,Partial Match on Link text,% driver.findElementByPartialLinkText("a time").Attribute("outerHTML") ;partial match text
MsgBox,,Full Match on Link text,% driver.findElementByLinkText("Automating my world; 1 script @ a time!").Attribute("innerText") ;Full match of link text
;***********css*******************
MsgBox,,CSS-Tag &Input,% driver.findElementsByCss("input[name='s']").item[1].Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByCss: tag of Input and name of S
MsgBox,,CSS-Just anme,% driver.findElementsByCss("[name='s']").item[1].Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByCss: Just use name
MsgBox,,CSS-JustID,% obj:=driver.findElementsByCss("[id='site-description']").item[1].Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByCss: just by id
MsgBox,,CSS-Class,% obj:=driver.findElementsByCss("[class='entry-title']").item[1].Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByCss: Class
MsgBox,,CSS-Atag element and url,% obj:=driver.findElementsByCss("a[href='https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeglines']").item[1].Attribute("outerHTML") ;ByCss: A tag & href=URL
;***********xPath***https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/firepath/****************
MsgBox,,XPATH-ID & Tag,% driver.findelementbyxpath(".//*[@id='site-title']/span/a").Attribute("outerHTML") ;XPath: ID=site-title & span tag
MsgBox,,XPATH-ID and Input Hierarchy,% driver.findelementbyxpath(".//*[@id='prime_nav']/li[8]/form/label/input").Attribute("outerHTML") ;XPath: ID=prime_Nave & tag heirarchy
Various methods from Selenium & by using JavaScript Execution
I went through and documented some of the additinol methods I used from Selenium & by injecting JavaScript. Check them out below as well as the video walking through the usage.
driver:= ComObjCreate("Selenium.CHROMEDriver") ;Chrome driver
;~ driver.SetProfile("H:\Temp\Chrome\Cache\cache\Default") ; 'Full path of the profile directory
driver.Get("https://the-automator.com/")
MsgBox,,Title via JavaScript, % driver.executeScript("return document.title") ;gets title
MsgBox,,Title, % Driver.Title ;Displays gets tab title
MsgBox pause
driver.executeScript("window.location = 'https://www.youtube.com/user/JoeGlines'") ;navigate using javascript
MsgBox % driver.executeScript("return document.location.pathname") ;get path of url
MsgBox pause
MsgBox,,Title, % Driver.Title ;Displays gets tab title
driver.executeScript("history.go(-1)") ;Go back one page
MsgBox pause
MsgBox,,Title, % Driver.Title ;Displays gets tab title
driver.executeScript("history.go(0)") ;refresh page
MsgBox pause
driver.executeScript("history.go(1)") ;Go forward one page
driver.executeScript("window.scrollBy(0,550)") ;scroll down page
MsgBox pause
driver.executeScript("window.scrollBy(0,950)") ;scroll down page
MsgBox % driver.executeScript("return document.domain") ;get domain of current page
MsgBox,,URL, % driver.url() ;gets current URL
MsgBox,,Href, % driver.executeScript("return document.location.href") ;get full url
MsgBox,,Protocol, % driver.executeScript("return document.location.protocol") ;get protocol
driver.Get("https://the-automator.com/?s=Selenium")
MsgBox,,Search, % driver.executeScript("return document.location.search") ;get everything from ? on
driver.executeScript("window.open('https://www.youtube.com/user/JoeGlines','_target','resizable=yes')") ;open new tab with new destiation
MsgBox pause
driver.executeScript("window.open('','_blank','resizable=yes')") ;open new blank tab
return
Maneuvering Frames in Selenium with AutoHotkey
The below code provides some insights on how to navigate frames with AutoHotkey
driver:= ComObjCreate("Selenium.CHROMEDriver") ;Chrome driver
driver.Get("http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/nested_frames")
;switch to a child frame
MsgBox % "count before change = " driver.FindElementsByTag("frame").count
driver.SwitchToFrame("frame-top")
MsgBox % "count after change = " driver.FindElementsByTag("frame").count
driver.SwitchToFrame("frame-middle")
MsgBox % driver.FindElementById("content").Text
return
Downloading files with Selenium and AutoHotkey
In this tutorial I demonstrate how I used AutoHotkey and Selenium to download a PDF file. The same process will work for other files that are not, automatically, opened by Chrome.
driver:= ComObjCreate("Selenium.CHROMEDriver") ;Chrome driver
;~ driver.SetProfile("H:\Temp\Chrome\Cache\cache\Default") ; 'Full path of the profile directory
driver.SetPreference("download.default_directory","c:\temp") ;set path to where you want the file saved
driver.get("chrome://settings-frame/content")
driver.findElementByID("pdf-section").click() ;disable open pdf
driver.Get("https://the-automator.com/download/group-tool.pdf")
Connecting to a current instance of Chrome
Thankfully tmplinshi has come up with a solution on how to connect to an already launched version of Chrome. Granted, you’ll need to launch Chrome with some command line parameters but this is an easy tweak to do by just adding them to your main shortcut to Chrome you’ll be able to connect to a current running Chrome window!
Here’s what you need to do for prep-work:
Make sure all current versions of Chrome are closed
Create a shortcut to chrome with this path: chrome.exe –remote-debugging-port=9222
Launch Chrome from your new shortcut
Then you can use the below code to connect with it! Check out the below video demonstrating how it works.
;********************Connect to Chrome and show title***********************************
driver := ChromeGet()
MsgBox, % driver.Window.Title "`n" driver.Url
return
ChromeGet(IP_Port := "127.0.0.1:9222") {
driver := ComObjCreate("Selenium.ChromeDriver")
driver.SetCapability("debuggerAddress", IP_Port)
driver.Start()
return driver
}
;********************Create new Chrome window***********************************
^t::
driver:= ComObjCreate("Selenium.CHROMEDriver") ;Chrome driver
driver.Get("https://the-automator.com/")
MsgBox, % driver.Window.Title "`n" driver.Url
return
;********************Launch Chrome with parameters***********************************
^+r::run chrome.exe "--remote-debugging-port=9222" ;Run in debugging mode
A while back someone wrote me saying how IE is dead and wondering how we can automate other browsers. While IE is definitely on it’s death-bed, I do still 
automate setting text in a search field and then hitting the button to submit the search.
walk through how you can use AutoHotkey and Selenium to automate web scraping in virtually any browser you wish. 🙂
