Automating certain repetive actions in IE based applications via a c# tool?

Question

http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/showthread.php?p=1221565#post1221565

This thread shows some discussion about what I'm trying to do. I can't use Powershell for this purpose and I'm not an advanced student, so my level is beginning intermediate. Understand concepts, but need lots of help and basic ideas :-)

Can i use a simple control in c# to let me take a internet window I currently have open for our IP phone system, take a string from another IE, or to keep it simple just a text string that I have, and have it submit the form, and fill out the required selections in the IE ip phone (ie, click on radio button, click submit, paste number, and click dial). All of our extremely repetitive actions daily are based on the same routine submissions on the IP phone (and it is TEDIOUS). This would greatly help our company, and we have no developers besides me (student that works on this stuff on the side). I'd really like to streamline some of our repetitive actions.

I'd like to know about the SIMPLEST way to possibly automate. Would VBA be better for this, can c# actually itself be used to control IE, set cursor position, submit requests, etc? I'm using this with mostly IE applications that we use at work, that I don't have source code to, so I'm trying to figure out how to do it as simply as possibly.

Beginner friendly reponses please. Dumb it down a little for someone who is still learning the foundations!

Answer 1

look at this post. On the way even Google's WebDriver

Answer 2

I have been investigating this some time ago and found a good tool for this: WatiN. It is normally used for testing web applications, but I think you can also find it helpful. It has an easy to learn API:

public void SearchForWatiNOnGoogle()
{
    using (IE ie = new IE("http://www.google.com"))
    {
        ie.TextField(Find.ByName("q")).TypeText("WatiN");
        ie.Button(Find.ByName("btnG")).Click();
    }
}