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Ask YC: Automating jobs

2 points by sangguine ↗ HN
For work, I have to upload a report to the server everyday. I am wondering if there is a way to automate this. The only internet browser that we can use is IE6. Is there some kind of script that I can write to make my life easier?

Here is the procedure: 1. I go to a page in the intranet in IE. 2. I click on "Browse" and browse for a file to upload. The file is in this format: report_mmdd.xls. So, I choose a file for that particular day (mmdd). 3. I click "Send"

3 comments

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goofygrin
you're just posting a form to the server. You can pretend to be IE in code and send the same HTTP traffic that the browser would send (use fiddler to watch the traffic and mimic it).
dpapathanasiou
curl (http://curl.haxx.se/) is a utility which you can script to post to web forms.

Just use the --user-agent option to pretend to be IE so the server accepts the request.

michael_dorfman
The fact that you a) don't know how to do this, and b) don't have a choice over which browser to use leads me to conclude that a) your company has an IT department, and b) you're not in it. I suggest you get in touch with them, as although the task you wish is simple, they're not going to be happy being stuck supporting some code they didn't write, that one of their users "got off the internet somewhere."