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Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

rocketride.io

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Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#41

Post by magundu »

fareesh wrote: post #7

There's a chrome extension that records all your steps and then generates a puppeteer/playwright script for you. Then you can just edit bits of that script and run it. This is my go-to method presently. I feel like you could incorporate some of those features into this and eliminate some of the manual entry of css selectors.

We are using Automa chrome extension for this kind of use cases. We really like it. It is free and open source. If you are thinking of building a product, you can make use of it.

https://www.automa.site/ https://github.com/AutomaApp/automa

Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#42

Post by thih9 »

whatatita wrote: post #17
thih9 wrote: post #4

Is there any way to play with the product without registering? Or perhaps see a video showing it in action?

Looks like you can register without CC details, and the majority of the homepage is a video example.

> the majority of the homepage is a video example

I’m not seeing any videos on the homepage (I’m using safari on iOS).

Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#43

Post by mmsimanga »

pmontra wrote: post #40
beatthatflight wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Update Scanner. I use it a lot to track airline prices/sales.

It could be this one. I remember the yellow highlights. It was many years ago and definitely not a cloud service so not Distill Web Monitor. It didn't let me define fields to monitor, so not PageProbe. I wouldn't have used a cloud service. What's the point? My browser already have everything it takes to download pages and diff them. I understand that if the computer is off the browser won't monitor the page but it wa…

I remember using the addon too. The reason for the addon had words to the effect that it enabled you to keep track of sites that did not have an RSS feed which was the more standard way getting new web content.

Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#44

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

BeetleB wrote: post #34

Only tangentially related, but... I use Firefox. Anyone know of a way I can have it close all tabs once a day? Either via an external script or an extension?

Not scripted, but ctrl-shift-w will do it manually in a single keystroke. (Per window)

Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#45

Post by dieselgate »

ramoz wrote: post #30

Curious what your pricing strategy is here? The free offering is cool for sure. Guess you'll learn how serious users may want to actually use the service, what that means for your unit costs, and how it all scales in your favor? or sort of already figured that out?

Not sure if you’re asking about Author’s long term pricing strategy but the tiered pricing is on the site

Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#46

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

lrobinovitch wrote: post #28
fareesh wrote: post #7

There's a chrome extension that records all your steps and then generates a puppeteer/playwright script for you. Then you can just edit bits of that script and run it. This is my go-to method presently. I feel like you could incorporate some of those features into this and eliminate some of the manual entry of css selectors.

Browserflow https://browserflow.app is excellent!

I really like the clean and simple layout of this website. It looks like bootstrap maybe. I wish more websites would follow this kind of layout.

Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#48

Post by iamandras »

lorey wrote: post #47

Really interesting tool. I've always found the task of finding the right CSS selectors tiresome, so I created tool which automatically extracts the right selectors for you (and builds a scraper as well). Open Source on GitHub: https://github.com/lorey/mlscraper

I'll check this repo, thx. It all started as an experiment with Playwright. And I also wanted to try whether I can build a full app, not just some simple scripts.

Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#49

Post by eastendguy »

xnx wrote: post #15
fareesh wrote: post #7

There's a chrome extension that records all your steps and then generates a puppeteer/playwright script for you. Then you can just edit bits of that script and run it. This is my go-to method presently. I feel like you could incorporate some of those features into this and eliminate some of the manual entry of css selectors.

UI Vision? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/uivision-rpa/gcbal... iMacros? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imacros-for-chrome...

I use both!

UI Vision is unique because it supports visual automation with image recognition and OCR. A bit like Sikuli but inside the browser. This avoids dealing with CSS selectors and XPaths.

Re: Show HN: I created a browser automation tool

#50

Post by yowmamasita »

EddySchauHai wrote: post #33
fizzpack wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it flakey for automation testing though? In my experience that's basically targeting page elements and interacting with them. Doesn't this do the same thing?

It uses a combination of xpaths that are like body[1]div[2]div[1]p[2]button[1] so if you edit the UI it'll break, or worst case they do X,Y coordinates of clicks on a page so if the UI changes it'll break. Sometimes it'll get your ID or Name or whatever but some frameworks randomize these on compilation and some devs change them as part of refactoring. Best practice is to add test attributes to the HTML elements (suc…

It detects the data-testid attribute quite well. We use it at work in replacement of manually creating cypress scripts.
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