Oh yes, I should also add I want it to run in the background, so no using the Macro or windows input.

Hello there. I have been using WinAutomation for more than a year now and the task that you are describing seems easily doable through the Macro Recorder. However, if you definitely need this process to run in the background, the only solution is the use of "Download from Web" action (which is not very easy for the new user).

I could give you an example on how to do this, if you tell me a specific site to login to and some sample links that you want to "monitor".

Sure. Here is the site:

www.warriorforum.com

And here is a sample thread:

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers...

I can kinda see how this is done with the facebook example from the Twitter How-To...my only question is how do you find out the login coding.

The reason I need to know this is because I'm going to be doing a ton of stuff that will need login's for accounts. API seems easy enough. It's when there isn't a specific API that is a lot harder.

Thanks for your help!

Rob

The task that you described will probably be automated easily with a job like the one that I attached. This job just reads a list from a text file named "ThreadList.txt" that is located in your Desktop (see attached for sample) and launches it in Mozilla Firefox (notice that the path to firefox is Vista-like with x86 in the path so you might have to change it).

How does it work? You just hit the Ctrl+Alt+K keystroke combination and it will launch firefox with the first thread from the list (going directly to the last page). The next time that you press the hotkey, the url will be moved to the bottom of the list. Assuming that Firefox is already logged in Warrior forum, this script should do the job for you.

I have tried using the "Download from Web" action and I managed to create a script that will log into the Warrior forum without a GUI. If you want me to show you how I did this please let me know.

Yes, that would be great.

I really need to know how to log in to forum properties, web 2.0, etc. using the download from web action.

The reason being is I need to work myself while these actions are going on in the background. Otherwise I just have to leave my computer to work.

Thanks!

Rob

I have attached a sample job. There are 3 variables that you will have to set:

1) %Username% = your username
2) %Password% = your password
3) %PasswordAsMD5% = your password encrypted. You can see the encrypted hash for your password if you go to this website enter your password in the "Type the string" field and press the Calculate MD5 button. Then just copy the hash that is printed below (in green letters) as the value of the variable in action no.4.

Notice that the cookie from your login is stored internally in your WinAutomation job. So, I have set the "Download from Web" action to save the result of the login process as an html page in your desktop.

Ok, sweet. Thanks.

Quick question:

How did you find the post paramenters for all this. Is it looking at the pages source code?

Yep... In the source code of the warrior forum page specifically:

<form action="http://www.warriorforum.com/login.php?do=login" method="post"

the method that is used to fill the login form and the actual url

<input type="text" class="bginput" style="font-size: 11px" name="vb_login_username"

first input

<input type="checkbox" name="cookieuser" value="1"

second input etc.

Awesome.

So I should be able to go to ezinearticles, find the login page, look for the "form action" post and pull the stuff from there to login?

And why is the encrypted password needed? I'm slightly confused about that.

Rob

Well this is something that the specific forum (warriorforum) and all vbulletin forums do in the background: they use a simple javascript function to retrieve the md5 hash of the password and send it to the server along with the normal password.

I'm not sure why they are doing it (I suspect security reasons) but I could also include another Download from Web step in my job to get the hash automatically from a web service. This way you wouldn't have to manually convert the password but I assumed that it is not really hard to do it.

Now, regarding ezinearticles or any other form, I can't tell for sure how hard will it be to use the "Download from Web" action in order to automate them in the background. I usually prefer to automate tasks like this visually for many reasons (e.g. easier to build, easier to check their progress, easier to maintain in case that the admins of the page decide to change the code). I then let my jobs run while I'm sleeping. I usually schedule some other jobs to be executed in the background (usually some maintenance tasks for my computer, and some upload/download FTP and report creation jobs).

Notice, that it is not possible to automate forms that involve captcha images with the "Download from Web" action (you can do it visually though). Also, you will come up with a lot of problems if you try to automate forms that are built through the .NET framework (most of them use some hidden fields to make sure that you are an actual visitor and not a machine). It is not impossible but needs some practice.

Ah, I see.

Thanks for everything!

Rob