Newbie Questions

[BigJake]

Hello:

I've been looking for a Windows GUI automation tool, and finally found AutoIt.  From what I've read, it looks very good.  However, I haven't yet found whether it has some capabilities which I need.  For instance, can it wait for a task to end (as when a completion dialog appears) before continuing the script?  Can it be scripted to perform the same task over and over, but supply different inputs for the various input fields with each iteration [hopefully reading the various inputs from a text (csv) file]?

Also, I've read that AutoIt can navigate web pages, but can it do screen-scraping on them?

I sincerely appreciate any information you can provide.

[ZacUSNYR]

There are built in functions, such as WinExists which will wait for a window to appear.  The script will not continue until that matching window is display.

There are many ways to do loops and many ways to have data.  Also you can read a CSV file for that data.

There are many ways to capture text off a webpage, some simple and some not.  Different sites will have different solutions.  

I'd recommend playing around, asking specific questions, searching for specifics tasks and seeing if there is already an answer.

Good luck on your learning process.

[corgano]

Give an example of a task you would like to do. My advice is get autoit (its tiny) and SciTE (the full installer in the downloads ssection makes it nicer) and then browse the help file. winwait, controlsend, controlcommand will get you through installers well enough. Loops are common to almost every language, and autoit syntax makes learning the basics of loops and functions easy.

And also, the best advice by far is

USE THE HELP FILE

IT's not just for noobs! I've been using autoit for four years, and still half my scripts and half my functions start off from help file examples.