AutoHotkey Community

Hello everyone,

There was always a problem sharing functions, also understanding and using stdlib or usrlib for beginners is rather difficult.
I remember where I tried to figure out how it works and then searched and collected all the functions which costs a lot of time

It would be great if we could have an option to include a script from the Internet.
That way it would be awsome simple to share scripts, also compiling would be much simpler.

For compiling it would be simple to change Ahk2Exe I think.
In AutoHotkey.exe we would need to be able to LoadIncludedScript from the internet.


What do you think about it?

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AHK_H (2alpha) AHF TT _Struct WatchDir Yaml _Input ObjTree RapidHotkey DynaRun

This is an amazing idea. We often link a user to our library and post code that uses it, and they come back with an error. This would eliminate that entirely.

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Autofire, AutoClick, Toggle, Spam • Window Control Tools
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what's the failure mode when no internet connection is available?

If it caches the last copy locally, then it might be ok.

The other issue is what if a function gets removed or changed in an upgrade. IT would suddenly break other people's scripts. If the owner is unwilling to put the old function, what is the user to do?

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I see a problem here because the poster of the online script can easily break it for many users. I would not want to access parts of a script from a location I can't control.

If anything, some sort of autoupdater would be nice. There would be some meta information in a script file that tells AHK where to look for an updated version and the user would have the possibility to update.

Many users will think it is hard and complicated if a script requires multiple libraries regardless if it is from the Internet or the local drive, especially if one of them using #include in itself. The users do not want to spend wondering whether to rewrite the code in the library to manually include the files and whether it is safe to do. That is a very frustrating process for beginners and most of them will give up.

I suggest to keep a script as simple as possible if you publish it. You can rename classes and functions and put them in the script so that it does not have to require extra stuff. Still if you have to use libraries, just specify the version numbers. That's should be sufficient.

here are some thoughts

the file will still need to be downloaded to be used your idea doesnt point out a destination.

Assuming it becomes part of the temporary internet files this may create a security concern since files executing localy with code from tem internet files may be identified by AV as malicious

since directives evaluates before any code is executed how should dl failure be handled.

I personally manage apps that DL code from intranet site on execution. I understand the point of having code always downloaded friesh but I dont think this is the way to do it

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Stolen from SKAN

here's my awful workaround:
After the first ugly 11 lines of code, you can call your function with a bit of extra work. If it is a "prefix" format, you could call it like %gdip%_BitmapFromHWND() to avoid so many variables.

Obviously, less than optimal

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Autofire, AutoClick, Toggle, Spam • Window Control Tools
Recommended: AutoHotkey_L

@nimda. I couldn't think of an elegant way to do it either...

Personally, I think it would be more desirable to have a program with a nice gui that allows a user to graphically manage their lib folders.

The program could display file names, versions, functions and classes, help manuals (if applicable), and have an update option (if a standard can be agreed upon).

(I'd do it, but I'm swamped already).

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It's an interesting idea. Pulling from the internet each run sounds awfully slow. In the worst case you get a connection that times out. More often scripts won't be available... and then what? It can't run without the includes.

It would be better to put them in a local Lib folder. That is, they only download when they can't be found. This primarily assumes you run the script after downloading it.

Should the user be asked first though? Whether or not they want to download it from some website?


@nimda, I just died a little inside...

but... if the includes are classes you can do If not ClassName { download it, reload }

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aboutscript ⍟ apps ⍟ scripts
Any code ⇈ above ⇈ requires AutoHotkey_L to run

It is an interesting idea, failing on some problems. That script could not be used without internet connection, if the lib is not cached. Frankie pointed it already out, connection could be slow for many users. Including internet files requires incredible trust on them, as they can be changed without the notice of the user. I would never use this function nor trust them (excluding some gold members here).

If you have users who do not program, then give them scripts in compiled form. That should be sufficient enough. Hiding a problem would only transport the problem to another place, not really solving it. If every noob would be able to include files from internet, then we get more problems after some time, than it solves. This shouldn`t part of AutoHotkey, imho.

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Thanks for all comments
The idea was not to download the file to disk, you could simply compile the script if you want to run it offline.

I think in generally it would be good enough if Ahk2Exe could handle this (when compiling).
User would get a warning if a file is about to be downloaded showing the address and would be given an option to cancel.
We could also have a list of trusted websites in Ahk2Exe.

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AHK_H (2alpha) AHF TT _Struct WatchDir Yaml _Input ObjTree RapidHotkey DynaRun

IMHO this goes in a similar direction like the idea of an official AHK Script/Function packet-manager, because you need to care about versioning.

This means that there has to be a packetsource (Server with php Interface and MySQL backend) and a client which can download and update the lib. In conclusion, a simple URL is not enough info, as it misses any version dependencies. This is btw the second point: Dependecy management would be necessary and this is done easiest with a central lib service...

dR & I brainstormed some of those points some time ago, if someone is interested I might be able to present our ideas...

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