automating web activity which includes form submission, javascript, and SSL

Question

I'm attempting to automate login into my small community bank, navigating through several links, and then downloading the .OFX.

I can't seem to find a good open source tool which is robust enough to handle this case. Automation frameworks like mechanize can't handle the Javascript.

I need this to be run in a graphic-less environment (via cron), so I don't think I can depend on tools such as watir which control standard browsers.

Any language is fine, although a scripting language is preferred.

Suggestions? Can I tap into the browser engines without displaying the browser?

Answer 1

Use webdriver . The API page says you can toggle the visibility.

If webdriver doesn't fit you, you can use COM directly to automate Internet Explorer, you'd just have to read the documentation page on MSDN.

I'm not really sure how they will react to the graphic-less environment though.

Another option would be to use HtmlUnit, which can handle JavaScript, and emulates a browser, so you don't need to worry about interfacing with a real browser.

As for the scripting part, you can use groovy which compiles to bytecode. If you know Ruby, you'll have no trouble picking up groovy. Here's a link that will help PLEAC groovy

Answer 2

Take a look at WWW::HtmlUnit. It is a Perl module that uses a Java library (included in the Perl module) that makes it easy to automate web pages, even those with JavaScript.

Answer 3

This may do what you want: Test Run: Web UI Automation with Windows PowerShell:

Dr. James McCaffrey - March 2008 Here we show you how to use Windows PowerShell to create quick and easy UI test automation for ASP.NET and classic ASP Web applications.