Catching windows dialog events Win32::OLE?

vectorscope has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello,

For the past few days I have been trying to write a little utility that will fire up IE navigate to a page fill out a form and submit it using Win32::OLE. For the most part this work beautifully, however, I am running into a problem with <input type="file"> objects. Apparently these are read only so I can't simply set the value in perl (at least not that I am aware of).

So instead I just use the ->Click() method which brings up a dialog box to choose a file.

The problem is after this ->Click() no other perl code is executed until I close the dialog box...I have a method that will fill in the name of the file and submit it, the problem is when I can't seem to detect when the file chooser dialog comes up :(

IE doesn't seem to fire any events indicating this dialog has been activated.

Basically I need to know when the dialog is open so I can execute code to fill in the file name and submit it.

Is there something I am missing here? Do I need to add another listener (ie Win32::OLE->WithEvents( ????)) that might catch this event?

Is there some other way to do this?

Thank you in advance for any insight anyone can provide.

Comment on Catching windows dialog events Win32::OLE?

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Re: Catching windows dialog events Win32::OLE? by marto (Cardinal) on Feb 12, 2009 at 23:03 UTC
Is there a reason you are not using something like Win32::IE::Mechanize (note Form Methods) to drive IE, populate and submit forms? Hope this helps Martin	[reply]
Re^2: Catching windows dialog events Win32::OLE? by vectorscope (Initiate) on Feb 13, 2009 at 02:03 UTC
Yes Mechanize does work wonderfully for forms...it even lets you set <input type='file'> properties... BUT Sadly the site I am trying to do this on uses javascript which Mechanize does not support :(	[reply]
Re^3: Catching windows dialog events Win32::OLE? by trwww (Priest) on Feb 13, 2009 at 05:19 UTC
Sadly the site I am trying to do this on uses javascript which Mechanize does not support :( You're thinking about WWW::Mechanize. Win32::IE::Mechanize is a Win32::OLE wrapper just like the code you are trying to write. Another more efficient approach than the one you are taking is to use HTTP::Recorder or similar utility and bypass the browser completely. Yet another method that is going to be more efficient than using the raw Win32::OLE API is to use one of the many interfaces to a piece of software called Selenium Basically, you are reinventing a wheel that has already been reinvented over and over and over (which of course is okay if... its okay with you). regards,	[reply]
Re^3: Catching windows dialog events Win32::OLE? by marto (Cardinal) on Feb 13, 2009 at 10:04 UTC
From the documentation: "This module tries to be a sort of drop-in replacement for WWW::Mechanize. It uses Win32::OLE to manipulate the Internet Explorer." I had a hunch that you'd be using IE due to JavaScript/AJAX pages, you may also be interested in Using WWW::Selenium To Test Or Automate An Ajax Website from the tutorials section of the site. Thanks Martin	[reply]