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Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

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Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#151

Post by lostintangent »

ta345345345 wrote: post #46
lostintangent wrote: post #12

Playwright is a new alternative to Selenium, and besides being cross-browser, is focused on performance, developer ergonomics and reliability (death to flakiness!). Might be worth checking out? https://github.com/microsoft/playwright . Disclaimer: I work with the Playwright team at Microsoft.

Keen to check it out; the flakiness of Webdriver/Selenium I often wonder is more pain than it brings. So many sites I see disabling tests based on it because they sometimes work/sometimes don't, the hours that get plowed into it. Edit: Missed the Microsoft ref. Not so keen.

Out of curiosity: why does the fact that Playwright is a Microsoft-sponsored OSS project discourage your interest?

The team is working very hard to be open/transparent/available (https://github.com/microsoft/playwright), and we’re very excited to build a better automation stack with the help of the community. I only ask since I’d love to hear any feedback for how we could improve the way we run/position the project. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#152

Post by asdfman123 »

bathtub365 wrote: post #127
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #121

I use YNAB ( https://youneedabudget.com/ ), which requires inputting every one of your transactions by hand or importing them from your bank. The downside of the import is it takes a few days for the transaction to show up and you need to give YNAB your bank username/password, which I'm not comfortable with. I wrote this https://github.com/buzzlawless/ynab-live-import to import credit card transactions instantly with…

That sounds a lot more complicated than just downloading bank statements and uploading them to YNAB and adds a lot more points of failure

It probably started as a side project that would specifically let them experiment with those technologies.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#154

Post by bluehatbrit »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #122
bluehatbrit wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted the same thing on a similar thread yesterday but if you're looking to build some scrapers and listeners and make it easy for yourself I'd highly recommend Huginn ( https://github.com/huginn/huginn ). I set it up a few months back and I've been using it to scrape all sorts of info and alert me on things. IE: * A change in GBP -> NOK exchange rate, to indicate if it's a good time to buy ready for my next trip…

Thanks for the link! huginn looks cool and useful (good combination!). Impressive work by 179 contributors. I have had numerous simpler projects automating my digital life but I made the (probable) mistake of always starting from scratch and writing stuff all on my own.

I was in a similar boat but refused to build my own system. Huginn was a perfect solution for me and I really enjoy using it. You can write your own agents if you need to but I haven't had to so far.

Since I set it up a few months ago I've been using it a bunch, it's event driven system is great for when you want to trigger off multiple streams half way through a flow. You can also go back through past events if you want which is really powerful.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#155

Post by bluehatbrit »

iKlsR wrote: post #117
bluehatbrit wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted the same thing on a similar thread yesterday but if you're looking to build some scrapers and listeners and make it easy for yourself I'd highly recommend Huginn ( https://github.com/huginn/huginn ). I set it up a few months back and I've been using it to scrape all sorts of info and alert me on things. IE: * A change in GBP -> NOK exchange rate, to indicate if it's a good time to buy ready for my next trip…

I found this last night and I'm already looking at replacing/extending my existing setup with it. Thanks for the share!

Nice! It didn't take me too long to setup with docker-compose on a cheap Digital Ocean instance. I'd suggest reading through all the options and toggles provided by environment variables though. There were quite a few I didn't find for a few weeks which proved to be important or useful and they're not explained in the docs all that well. Aside from that, I've not had any teething issues really.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#156

Post by wry_discontent »

lignux wrote: post #126
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #121

I use YNAB ( https://youneedabudget.com/ ), which requires inputting every one of your transactions by hand or importing them from your bank. The downside of the import is it takes a few days for the transaction to show up and you need to give YNAB your bank username/password, which I'm not comfortable with. I wrote this https://github.com/buzzlawless/ynab-live-import to import credit card transactions instantly with…

What do you do about cash transactions?

I don't use ynab anymore, but when I did, I usually just didn't include cash in it. I almost never use cash, and so it made sense to just deduct the money when it became cash.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#157

Post by wastedhours »

ankit_it09 wrote: post #51

I used google scripts and google forms for some of my automation like: 1 - Notify me when Movie tickets are available to book. Used google scripts that run every minute and hit a URL to check if tickets are available now. 2 - Book a class when it's available, I have joined a Gym where you have to book a class before going, and the Zumba is very famous there the time it opens it fills up in 30seconds and there are lim…

Have the same problem for my own local Zumba class, will have to investigate whether we can automate it vs just setting an alarm for when they release booking (also at 10pm)

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#158

Post by YourMatt »

cpclermont wrote: post #100

I have 141 custom scripts in my $HOME/bin. Most of it is in bash, but there's a couple of node.js scripts as well. - I mostly automate my bookkeeping with a set of recurring & dependent taskwarrior tasks and scripts as annotations that I run with taskopen[1]. That's creating a bunch of folders, turning some emails in mutt into PDFs, gathering PDFs from emails, fetching bills with selenium, moving files from $DOWNLOAD…

How do you like using Node for CLI? I started playing around with it a couple years ago, and at this point, I don't even consider BASH scripts if they involve the slightest bit of logic. Part of me feels like by going all-in, I'm going to lose touch with my ability to write direct BASH scripts, which are likely to work literally forever. Meanwhile, I expect my Node scripts to have a relatively short lifespan, particularly in that I'm leaning on NPM. It's been so nice though, I've decided it was a worthy tradeoff.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#159

Post by spectramax »

boomeranked wrote: post #153

Airbnb experiences will not add an API, so if you run any kind of tours, you have to go the App to add/remove/change dates/prices/starting points. Selenium takes care of it now.

Everytime I use Selenium, even for legitimate use cases, I feel dirty deep down under. My soul writhens and I want to do something else in life other than writing Selenium automation - perhaps chop some wood.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#160

Post by akulbe »

iKlsR wrote: post #18

I have a slack workspace that has several bots, some listen for specific keywords and or phrases around the web and post to the relevant channels. Other bots remind me if I'm slacking off (maybe stayed a little too long on youtube), remind me of appointments, to drink water, if a stock price falls and some more. Also have filtered rss feeds for business and finance news etc. All of these bots also have custom identit…

would love to talk to you more about how you set this up
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