Interaction between ZP and Winautomation

[morpheus93]

Hi guys,

need to automate some UI on Windows and using Winautomation for that. For all the web-related things for soure I use ZP. But now I have to extract some data from a website and pass it to a variable of Winautomation so it clicks on the right drop-down menu item in the UI of the Windows software.

What would you recommend is the best approach for this?

Thanks guys and have a nice day.

 

[morpheus93]

Nobody an idea?

One approach I thought of, that could maybe work, is to compile a standalone exe from within Winauto and then passing CLI-arguments when calling this exe from ZP. But don't know if the compiling feature of WA does support such arguments.

 

[morpheus93]

Nobody an idea?

One approach I thought of that could maybe work is to compile a standalone exe from within Winauto and then pass CLI-arguments when calling this exe from ZP. But don't know the compiling feature of WA does support such arguments.

Yep, that works great. WA does support CLI-arguments.

Maybe there are any additional approaches for passing variable data from ZP to WA? I'm always open for a plan B

 

[bigcajones]

You can use zenno as a windows automation tool. It has to be done with c#, but is possible. I got it to work with bluestacks. The only problem is that it is coordinate driven.

 

[morpheus93]

Hi, bigcajones,

"Automating Bluestacks via ZP"? Wow, sounds great I'm using Bluestacks a lot and want to automate it also with Zenno since a while. Tried a bit with other Android auto tools... some of them are looking very promising, but havent' the time to check them closer. Okay the drawback is the coordinate thing in using Zenno for Android relatet things...

 

[bigcajones]

When I get back on my server tomorrow, I will see if I can share it so you'll get the idea. The problem with doing this is if screen resolutions are different or program opens a different size coordinates won't be found and since it is in c# it keeps running even if something screws up.

 

[bigcajones]

Here's Bluestacks template for you to look at morpheus.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gftvu8ar17u0rob/BlueStacks.xmlz?dl=0

 

[morpheus93]

Forgot to say "Thank you" bigcajones

 

[Harambulus]

Very interesting thread this is pretty much exactly what ive been looking into recently. Hope I can somehow understand it .

Morpheus how are you getting on with it- do you think its gonna be better to use winauto or sir cahones's template? I also have winauto and was just about to do the very same thing, but im gonna use winauto on a vbox since winauto would jam up the desktop wouldnt it otherwise since you need to have the desktop clear for the clicks?

I havent used winauto for a couple years so gonna be rusty picking it back up and i remember the support community was pretty much non existence except the odd dev comment.

Edit: lol that is one seriously delayed thank you morpheus Better late than never

 

[morpheus93]

Very interesting thread this is pretty much exactly what ive been looking into recently. Hope I can somehow understand it .

Morpheus how are you getting on with it- do you think its gonna be better to use winauto or sir cahones's template? I also have winauto and was just about to do the very same thing, but im gonna use winauto on a vbox since winauto would jam up the desktop wouldnt it otherwise since you need to have the desktop clear for the clicks?

I havent used winauto for a couple years so gonna be rusty picking it back up and i remember the support community was pretty much non existence except the odd dev comment.

Edit: lol that is one seriously delayed thank you morpheus Better late than never

Currently using Winautomation for automating desktop-related things (e.g. open a program, chose a value which was passed from ZP before from a dropdown menue...) You can compile a standalone-exe in Winauto and pass commandline arguments directly from ZP variables to this exe (step "own code - run program" in PM). Also it's possible to call a Winauto-Job from Zenno and pass variables to it without compiling it to an exe (that's the way I'm doing it currently). Just open the Winautomation help and search for "Command Line", you should find all the infos you need to get it to work.

At the moment I'm passing only data from ZP variables to WA jobs not vice versa, because it seems that WA can't give back data after a job is called via CLI (it can only give back numerical status codes). But if you need such a feature I think it can be handled easily by writing the data that should be passed to ZP to a txt-file and read it from within ZP.

Hope this helps

 

[Harambulus]

Thanks I dont need to have them interact with one another directly at the moment but gave me something to think about for sure for future Opens up alot of possibilities.