IE UDF advice

[shea851]

Hello,

I'm attempting to automate an IE webpage that seems to use javascript and is quite complex. First, I need a way to find the correct "form" on the page.

$s_URL = http://www.website.com/
$o_IE = _IECreate($s_URL)
$o_Form = _IEFormGetObjByName($o_IE, "formNameThatINeed!")

Viewing the source or using the ie udf function "_IEDocReadHTML" isn't really helpful, since I'm looking at like over a thousand lines of code, and there doesn't appear to be any form names listed...

Would using something like this work?

$oIE = _IECreate (http://www.website.com/)
$oForms = _IEFormGetCollection ($oIE)

Or are these "forms" something different than what I would need?

Thanks. Please let me know if more information is needed.

Edited August 7, 2009 by shea851

[Juvigy]

Check for the debugbar or the IE8 development tools they can help you greatly in your task.

[shea851]

Check for the debugbar or the IE8 development tools they can help you greatly in your task.

Checking out debugbar now.. it looks promising. Thanks a lot for the suggestion.

[shea851]

Checking out debugbar now.. it looks promising. Thanks a lot for the suggestion.

Well, I'm able to use debugbar to find the form name of anything on the page, which seems useful, except that according to Autoit, there are no forms on the page. Wtf?

Just to humor myself I went ahead and ran this function:

$oIE = _IECreate ("http://usd/CAisd/pdmweb.exe")
$oForms = _IEFormGetCollection ($oIE)
MsgBox(0, "Forms Info", "There are " & @extended & " forms on this page")
For $oForm In $oForms
    MsgBox(0, "Form Info", $oForm.name)
Next

It tells me there are 0 forms on the page. Debugbar says otherwise.

Here's my original code that doesn't work, because I can't specify a correct form.

$sRequestNum = "R1234567"

Func _USDtest($sRequestNum)
    $s_URL = ("http://usd/CAisd/pdmweb.exe")
    $o_IE = _IECreate($s_URL)
    $o_Form = _IEFormGetObjByName($o_IE, "goBtnForm")
    $o_RequestInputField = _IEFormElementGetObjByName($o_Form, "searchKey")
    _IEFormElementSetValue($o_RequestInputField, $sRequestNum)    
    _IEFormSubmit($o_Form)
    SetError(0)
    Return 1
EndFunc

And here's what Debugbar gives me for the form name:

<FORM name=goBtnForm

And when I run the script, here's what I get:

--> IE.au3 V2.4-0 Warning from function _IEFormGetObjByName, $_IEStatus_NoMatch

Am I going about this all wrong or are there just some webpages that aren't possible to automate? Because.. I'm pretty sure this should be working.

Edited August 8, 2009 by shea851

[DaleHohm]

You are likely being fooled by Frames or iFrames. If your form is in a frame it will not be found in the top level document and you need to use _IEFrame* functions to get a reference to the correct container.

Easiest way to find frames using DebugBar is to click on the "View Source" icon on the DebugBar toolbar (blue document icon with <> over it).

Dale

[Juvigy]

$oIE = _IECreate ("http://usd/CAisd/pdmweb.exe")

This doesnt look like a correct site address to me - what is this .exe file?

[shea851]

$oIE = _IECreate ("http://usd/CAisd/pdmweb.exe")

This doesnt look like a correct site address to me - what is this .exe file?

It is. It's in a corporate environment.. that's the address to connect to the USD (Unicenter Service Desk) webpage. But I do agree that it is strange for it to show a .exe, but that's just how it is. >_<

[Juvigy]

And what is the address of that webpage? When you type "http://usd/CAisd/pdmweb.exe" in IE what happens?

This looks like an application to me.I dont think you can use the IE functions on a .exe file.

[shea851]

Dale.. I was being fooled by frames. The code below works perfectly for what I was trying to do. Now that I know the basics of working with the IE UDF as well as the specific webpage I hopefully shouldn't need to request further help here. Thanks everyone for your input.

Inputs a request number and clicks the search button.

$sRequestNum = "R1234567"

_USDtest($sRequestNum)

Func _USDtest($sRequestNum)
    $s_URL = "http://usd/CAisd/pdmweb.exe"
    $o_IE = _IECreate($s_URL)
    $o_Frame = _IEFrameGetObjByName ($o_IE, "gobtn")
    $o_Form = _IEFormGetObjByName($o_Frame, "goBtnForm")
    $o_RequestInputField = _IEFormElementGetObjByName($o_Form, "searchKey")
    _IEFormElementSetValue($o_RequestInputField, $sRequestNum)    
    $o_SubmitButton = _IEGetObjByName($o_Form, "imgBtn0_button")
    _IEAction($o_SubmitButton, "click")
    SetError(0)
    Return 1
EndFunc

Edited August 11, 2009 by shea851