AutoHotkey Community

[RIKI]

Can someone PLEASE hold my hand here? I after hours of troubleshooting, I have exhausted my patience with a very simple task.

Yes, I am a new user of AHK (but before writing to you all, I made sure to study the program & help menu). Still, I am going crazy here.

Mind you, so far, I thought to just use the Autoscript recorder (because it looked like a no brainer, saving me from learning how to write code).

I would appreciate direction on how to achieve my goal (and perhaps even wrote the code for me so I can understand where I am going wrong).

This is what I want to do (very simple):

• Visit https://post.craigslist.org/sdo/S/msg/csd to add text into a body.
• Copying prewritten text into my clipboard.
• Paste the clipboard contents into that web link’s empty body.
• Click on the web link’s CONTINUE button (to finish task).

A few things go haywire:

• The Autoscript recorder does not seem to copy my text into the clipboard & past it into mentioned web link body. The only way for me to get text into that body is to type it in real time.

• Autoscript recorder seems to move too fast & does not pick up every prompt I do. The result is an unfinished Macro. Also, the text that was force to type in real time ends up getting pasted wrong areas of my the web link (like the TITLE fields instead of the BODY field.

• Sometimes, when I finish an AHK file (even if it is wrong) will not appear to execute (at least not visually on the desktop) unless links & files that I used for it are OPEN on the desktop.

Ultimately, I know it would be wisest to write code (instead of use Autoscript recorder). I sure would appreciate someone would write my first task here (and I will learn from it). I bet many other readers would value your help here too (because my task might be a very common one). Thanks.

[BoBo²]

It'll be less difficult to understand your attempt if you'd provide your code.
Don't be afraid, my coding is the worst on this planet, so yours won't be definitely that bad.

[sinkfaze]

[Hasso]

And please inspect your keyboard. The Shift key seems to be stuck.

[ Moderator!: subject changed to proper case ]
_________________
Hasso

Programmers don't die, they GOSUB without RETURN

[tank]

for the function see
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30599

[CannedCheese]

Does this still work? I've clicked the link and bound the two examples to F2 and F3, respectively [edit: list all elements works-- was blocked by the IE popup blocker, but the script to fill out the form on craigslist still does not work for me]. I'm able to use IE7_Nav and the other examples in Tank's Automation Example no problem. I do have #Include COM.AHK with the file in my script directory. Nothing happens. I'm a javascript noob. Can I manually paste a line in my browser to test if it should work?

I should add-- windows explorer is closed (if this matters).

Ultimately, I would like to navigate to a website automatically, fill in a form (like I think this example does), click the submit button, and then run something like

[tank]

glad to here things worked
Now lets talk about whats wrong
first the com library shouldnt be an include it should be placed in a folder called lib in the autohotkey directory
example:
c:\program files\autohotkey\lib

then you will not need the include directive
so then you want to fill out the form here
https://post.craigslist.org/sdo/S/msg/csd
sounds like you got the list elements js working but are missing something
lets have a look at the list elements again then see if you can follow this

[CannedCheese]

[tank]

the thanks comes in the effort
the problem of the not clicking is mine
some machines are faster than others i suppose might be why the readystate in the initial part of the code isnt working
you did what i would have there
but clicking that button onlyfor me only worked like this

[CannedCheese]

Thanks Tank. It works great and with your new code I can get it to click both buttons. I’ve tweaked it a tiny bit and have gotten it to work on other pages as well. It really makes it easier (for me) to learn from taking apart a working example. Now, I hope you won’t mind two more questions:

1) You state that you would use a sleep command as well. I was hoping that there would be a way, through the IE7_readyState (which returns 0 long before the page I need to load has loaded), to check that the page/tab has finished loading in the background (the pages that I need to hit vary greatly depending on traffic, it seems, and can take anywhere from 1 to 15 seconds to load). I tried setting up a loop that checks IE7_readyState but a 0 is returned long before the page has finished loading. I use firefox for my browser but actually like the idea of using IE7 for all automation, since a) it seems easier to automate and b) it allows me not to get confused as to which instance in currently running a script-- I can leave it alone when automating a task. In firefox, I’ve had to resort to all kinds of imagesearch and pixelsearch routines to ensure that a page has finished loading. A foolproof way to determine if an IE page has loaded (when minimized or in the background) would be sweet. I know there may be other methods though I'm not sure that they apply to inactive windows (or tabs). Should I be looking into something other than the IE7_readyState function for this?

2) In this craigslist example, can I now use IE7_Nav or IE7_ExecuteJS to write the javascript code to the current "san diego craigslist" tab in the background that copies the entire resulting html to the clipboard?

[tank]