From: Xavier Noria <fxn@...>
Date: 2006-06-28T02:53:26+09:00
Subject: how to wrap methods of WIN32OLE objects

I am doing screen-scraping with Explorer:

   WIN32OLE.new('InternetExplorer.Application')

When you ask explorer to send some request and the method returns it  
may need yet some time to complete building the DOM etc., and you  
need to do something like:

   def wait_for_completion
     sleep 1 while @ie.busy
     sleep 1 while @ie.readyState != 4
     sleep 1 while @ie.document.readyState != 'complete'
   end

Since there is no class to subclass I tried to wrap the method to  
submit simple requests (Navigate) like this:

   # untested
   original_navigate = @ie.method(:Navigate)
   def @ie.navigate(url)
     original_navigate(url)
     wait_for_completion
   end

but it turns out that @ie is an object of class WIN32OLE that has  
no :Navigate method (so the program dies in that @ie.method 
(:Navigate)). Perhaps this has something to do with late binding. Do  
you know any way to do that?

-- fxn