From: James Britt <james.britt@...>
Date: 2010-04-15T06:07:06+09:00
Subject: Re: How to use AutoIt in Ruby

Marvin G�lker wrote:

> 
> Otherwise, stick to win32ole:
> require "win32ole"
> au3 = WIN32OLE.new("AutoItX3.Control")


That's how I've used it.  It's pretty straightforward.

I typically ended up writing a few helper methods for some of the 
repetitive things that required sending multiple commands to autoitx, or 
just to make the main code cleaner.



#---- example: sign in to library Web site  ---
require 'win32ole'

def set_up
   @au3 = WIN32OLE.new "AutoItX3.Control"
   @au3.opt "WinTextMatchMode", 2
end

# Yeah, it's kinda old ...
def browse_to url
   @au3.Run "C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox2\\firefox.exe #{url}"
end

def enter
   @au3.Send "{ENTER}"
end

def tab
   send "{TAB}"
end


def wait n
   @au3.Sleep n.to_i
end

def send s
   warn s
   @au3.Send s.to_s
end

def wait_for_title t
   @au3.WinWaitActive t.to_s
end

#---------------

cardnumber = '9670150903536'
pin        = '90873'
set_up
browse_to 'http://libcat.scottsdaleaz.gov/patroninfo'
wait_for_title "Millennium Web Catalog"

# Make sure whole page has loaded over flakey WiFi
sleep  4

send cardnumber
tab
send pin
enter


#---------------


It's also handy to learn about the Windows message queue and sending 
commands there.  It makes it easier/more reliable to trigger actions 
using, say, accelerator commands or keyboard shortcuts (e.g. ctrl+v) 
instead of mouse clicks or menu navigation.

I had some code that hooked into Watir and took screenshots of each 
page, pasted them into Paintbrush, then saved them to disk, but at the 
moment I have no idea where that code is.  But sending raw key messages 
made it pretty easy to do.

http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/appendix/WinMsgCodes.htm



-- 
James Britt

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