stoli Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 I am trying to retrieve text from within an activeX control that is an object in a web page. There is no specific documentation on the control. All I know is the filename and location on my drive (it is a .dll that is downloaded via a .cab file). The control itself is very simple, there is a single window in which you type in text commands and you get text back. Just like a dos prompt. So far, I have created an au3 script to start IE, put in my username and password, submit the form and then open the page with the control in it. I have also been successful using the Send command to activate the control and enter text commands. Now I need to retrieve the responses. The response text is in the control itself and not part of the html in the page. I know I am being rather vague, and apologize. Any ideas on what my next step might be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zfisherdrums Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Hello Stoli, A quick response before I run out the door. 1 ) Google the control and see if there is any publicly available API documentation for the object 2 ) Use OLEview (or Excel VBA ) to interrogate the DLL for exposed methods, properties, etc. 3 ) If all else fails, resort to OCR. For my money, SnagIt8 is a relatively cheap/powerful OCR application that provides a COM server that can be embedded in an AutoIt script. Hope this helps! Zach... Identify .NET controls by their design time namesLazyReader© could have read all this for you. Unit Testing for AutoItFolder WatcherWord Doc ComparisonThis here blog... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoli Posted November 1, 2007 Author Share Posted November 1, 2007 Thanks Zach. Your reply was a help - a sanity check at the very least to make sure I was on the right track. The control has no documentation and no exposed methods other than a few parameters set inside the html document. No suprise since the authors are paranoid about the security of the site. The control does allow a crude text "select" using the mouse, and a standard copy/paste interface, so I might be able to script the process that way. Crude, but it might work. I will attack the problem from that angle and see where it takes me. Thanks for the reply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaleHohm Posted November 2, 2007 Share Posted November 2, 2007 Note that you can use _IEPropertyGet on the OBJECT element to get its screen or browser-based coordinates, height and width that could aid you in positioning mouse clicks. Dale Free Internet Tools: DebugBar, AutoIt IE Builder, HTTP UDF, MODIV2, IE Developer Toolbar, IEDocMon, Fiddler, HTML Validator, WGet, curl MSDN docs: InternetExplorer Object, Document Object, Overviews and Tutorials, DHTML Objects, DHTML Events, WinHttpRequest, XmlHttpRequest, Cross-Frame Scripting, Office object model Automate input type=file (Related) Alternative to _IECreateEmbedded? better: _IECreatePseudoEmbedded Better Better? IE.au3 issues with Vista - Workarounds SciTe Debug mode - it's magic: #AutoIt3Wrapper_run_debug_mode=Y Doesn't work needs to be ripped out of the troubleshooting lexicon. It means that what you tried did not produce the results you expected. It begs the questions 1) what did you try?, 2) what did you expect? and 3) what happened instead? Reproducer: a small (the smallest?) piece of stand-alone code that demonstrates your trouble Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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