Friday, February 4, 2011

AutoIt: The basics

The setup:

Your boss cracks the whip and says, "Get me this data by tomorrow or I'll turn your pet rat into a human and send him to Azkaban!" The data you need though, is stored in some evil organization's crazy computer program, and the only way you can figure out to get it out is to copy and paste a number, click the "Next" button, scroll down three lines, rinse, and repeat. How dreary, and you'd much rather be hanging out with your cool non-data-monkey friends on a Friday night anyway, right?

The solution:
AutoIt.

What's that do? Well, it automates all the clicky/typey things that bore humans but make computers leap with excitement. Basically, if you can type it or click it (or both), you can figure out a way to make AutoIt automate it. It's almost like having your very own wand.

Find it here:
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/downloads.shtml

Best way to get started is to poke through some of the included scripts and play around. Online docs are here:
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/

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