How do I emulate website navigation

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I need to perform a data export using the web interface from our local school printer ( to monitor how many copies are done by which account on a daily basis ). This thing ( it's a big Konica printer) has no Web API, and no for-a-school-affordable SW solution that would do the monitoring, which leaves me with two options:
- Remote-connect to the school server everyday, connect to the printer using a browser via the web-interface (there is a web portal when you connect to the printer using its IP address), navigate to the export page and export the data.
- Automate this to some extent.
Is there any way to "emulate" the navigating on the web page and make the export ? I see no other option here, and I presume that there must be some way to simulate a navigation on a website (how do you guys who do web development make use-cases tests ?).

We are talking about a Konica bizhub 284e. The emulation consists in navigating to a specific page, then clicking on an export button.

What I have tried:

Nothing yet, to be honest, I am trying to find a direction to follow.

Posted 13-Dec-16 0:42am

Rage

Updated 14-Dec-16 1:00am

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Bassam Abdul-Baki 13-Dec-16 6:48am

Emulating web navigation is probably not the way, but AutoIt[^] should do it.

I've also used KiXtart[^] and AutoHotkey[^].

Rage 13-Dec-16 7:00am

Thanks, Autoit would most probably be my tool of choice if nothing else arise from the above question. I was not sure, since it involves events (like connecting to the printer) that might be time-based and therefor unreliable, but it is worth trying out.

4 solutions

Solution 1

Do you have a syslog server running somewhere in the local school net (or a Linux server that can be setup as syslog server)?

Then you can send the logs to that server (can be configured in the printer setup) and retrieve them from there. You may also perform the preprocessing of the logs on the server (e.g. using a log file watcher or a cron job).

Posted 13-Dec-16 1:09am

Jochen Arndt

Solution 3

Check our Selenium or Test Partner. They let you record scripts of actions on the web page and then play them back.

Posted 13-Dec-16 3:56am

Yuriy Loginov

Solution 4

This[^] doesn't help?

Posted 14-Dec-16 1:00am

Bassam Abdul-Baki

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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-13T01:35:00

You may use WebBrowser[^] to do that...

C#

WebBrowser oWebBrowser = new WebBrowser;
oWebBrowser.Navigate(new Uri('address-of-printer/page-to-export'));
HtmlElement oLink = oWebBrowser.Document.GetElementByID("id-of-button-to-click");
oLink.InvokeMember("click");

However I would check this with Konica: Konica Minolta OpenAPI - Wikipedia[^]