[HN Gopher] Show HN: I created a browser automation tool
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Show HN: I created a browser automation tool
I created this tool a few months ago to automate some of my tasks.
I use it to collect prices and files and to get notified when
something changes on certain websites. The task runner uses
Playwright. I'm not sure if it can be useful to anybody else
besides me :) Any feedback is welcome.
Author : iamandras
Score : 69 points
Date : 2022-08-05 05:58 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rocketride.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rocketride.io)
| fareesh wrote:
| 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.
| czbond wrote:
| I just started using a Selenium IDE + selenium-side-runner for
| headless automation. Is puppeteer or Selenium a more widely
| supported tool?
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| Selenium is the most popular tool in the industry but mostly
| for legacy reasons, its real competitor is Cypress. If you've
| just started a project I'd recommend checking it out, a huge
| time saver is that you install it as an npm package with a
| headless browser out the box without any webdriver/infra
| stuff slowing you down.
| bckr wrote:
| Selenium is more widespread but I recommend Playwright as the
| most modern automation library. Comes with plugins for making
| your automations more... nimble.
| lrobinovitch wrote:
| Browserflow https://browserflow.app is excellent!
| iamandras wrote:
| Oh, interesting. What is the name of that extension?
| yareally wrote:
| Probably this:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/headless-
| recorder/...
| Fnoord wrote:
| Selenium allows this, and its also there for Firefox. You can
| even export the actions as a different language e.g. Python.
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| You can do it in the chrome browser tools! There's a record
| section. Note if you're doing this for automation testing
| it's going to be pretty flakey and you're better off
| following best practices and using custom testing selectors
| instead :)
| fizzpack wrote:
| 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?
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| 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 (such as data-testid="SubmitButton") so if the
| page is moved around or the button is edited the tests
| remain stable. There's a lot of good online sources on
| making UI testing somewhat more reliable :)
| fareesh wrote:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/headless-
| recorder/...
| xnx wrote:
| UI Vision? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/uivision-
| rpa/gcbal...
|
| iMacros? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imacros-for-
| chrome...
| pmontra wrote:
| > Periodically check for changes
|
| I remember a Firefox extension that notified me with the diffs of
| changed pages. I don't remember exactly what I was using it for.
| I think something related to CVEs for some keywords. Then the
| service I was using shut down and I lost tracks of that
| extension.
| iamandras wrote:
| yeah. I was considering creating a focused version for this
| like visualping.io
| xnx wrote:
| Distill Web Monitor? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/distill-web-m...
| ChrisGranger wrote:
| Perhaps Distill Web Monitor or PageProbe?
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/distill-web-m...
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pageprobe/
| Krastan wrote:
| This is cool! Is it free? If not would be good to have pricing be
| visible without creating an account.
|
| Also the logo in the header looks low definition. Upping its
| resolution will make the website way better.
| matthberg wrote:
| Looks like a simple enough design that vector would probably be
| more space efficient and have infinite resolution. The product
| looks interesting too!
| iamandras wrote:
| It is free for a short period of time, but after that, it will
| be a paid service.
| permalac wrote:
| Do you have a cost plan?
|
| I've invested so much time in similar things just to not be
| able to afford it...
| permalac wrote:
| My god, I'm on cellphone and did not see the costs at the
| bottom. Apologies.
| iamandras wrote:
| What similar things?
| thih9 wrote:
| Is there any way to play with the product without registering? Or
| perhaps see a video showing it in action?
| whatatita wrote:
| Looks like you can register without CC details, and the
| majority of the homepage is a video example.
| ramoz wrote:
| 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?
| dhux wrote:
| Can you also record video with sound?
| iamandras wrote:
| no.
| asot22 wrote:
| why not? seems a reasonable ask?
| anon115 wrote:
| landing page is nice
| bcjordan wrote:
| I'd love to use this as a webpage interaction/scraping component
| in chains of webhooks (building on e.g. low-code step pipelines
| built with Pipedream, could imagine fitting with something like
| Zapier, too).
|
| Would require the ability to:
|
| (1) make a web request to start a run
|
| (2) collect the scraped info and return it as part of (a) a
| webhook call or (b) in the response of a synchronous "start run"
| blocked long http request
|
| It sounds like #1 is already possible. 2a might be possible if
| there was a call webhook step or notification option? But 2b
| would be the simplest (if I could make a single GET or POST
| request, and the response gives me some outputs from an
| automation session).
|
| Zapier/Pipedream integrations could be nice platform integration
| marketing for the tool as well.
| partloyaldemon wrote:
| I'll check it out. Thanks!
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(page generated 2022-08-05 23:00 UTC)