{"id":43813,"date":"2014-10-20T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2014\/10\/20\/scripting-an-internet-explorer-window\/"},"modified":"2014-10-20T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T07:00:00","slug":"scripting-an-internet-explorer-window","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20141020-00\/?p=43813","title":{"rendered":"Scripting an Internet Explorer window"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nToday’s Little Program takes a random walk through MSDN\nby starting at the Create­Process<\/code> page\nand randomly clicking links.\nThe exercise is not as important as the technique it demonstrates.\n<\/p>\n

\nfunction randomwalk(ie, steps) {\n for (var count = 0; count < steps; count++) {\n  WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(ie.document.title);\n  var links = ie.document.querySelectorAll(\"#mainSection a\");\n  do {\n   var randomLink = links[Math.floor(Math.random() * links.length)];\n  } while (randomLink.protocol != \"http:\");\n  WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(\"Clicking on \" + randomLink.innerText);\n  randomLink.click();\n  while (ie.busy) WScript.Sleep(100);\n }\n}\n<\/pre>\n
\n(I’m assuming the reader can figure out what language this script is\nwritten in.\nIf you have to ask, then you probably won’t understand this article\nat all.\nI am also not concerned with random number bias because Little Program.)\n<\/p>\n
\nTo talk a random walk through MSDN,\nwe ask for all the links in the\nmain­Section<\/code> element.\nNote that I’m taking an undocumented dependency on the structure\nof MSDN pages.\nThis structure has changed in the past,\nso be aware that the script may stop working at any time\nif the MSDN folks choose to reorganize their pages<\/i>.\nI’m not too worried since this is a demonstration,\nnot production code.\nIn real life, you are probably going to script a Web page that\nyour team designed (as part of automated testing),\nso taking a dependency on the DOM is something the QA team\ncan negotiate with the development team.\n(If your real life scenario really is walking through the MSDN\ncontent, then you should use the\n\nMSDN content API<\/a>.\n\nHere’s sample code<\/a>.)\n<\/p>\n
\nAnyway, we grab a link at random,\nbut throw away anything that is not an http: link.\nThis avoids us accidentally navigating into a mailto: link,\nfor example.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe then invoke the click()<\/code> method on the link to\nsimulate the user clicking on it.\nWe could also have just navigated to\nrandomLink.href<\/code>,\nbut I’m using the click()<\/code> method\nbecause it is more general.\nYour script may want to tick some checkboxes and then click\nthe Submit button,\nand those actions can’t be performed by navigation.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe then wait for the Web page to settle down.\nI’m lazy and am simply using a polling loop.\nIf you want to be clever,\nyou could listen on the\non­ready­state­change<\/code> event,\nbut this is just a Little Program, so I’m content to just poll.\n<\/p>\n
\nOnce we have settled on the new page,\nwe loop back and do it again.\n<\/p>\n
\nNow we just need to drive this helper function.\n<\/p>\n
\nvar ie = new ActiveXObject(\"InternetExplorer.Application\");\nie.visible = true;\nie.navigate(\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/ms682425\");\n\/\/ Wait for it to load\nwhile (ie.busy) WScript.Sleep(100);\nrandomwalk(ie, 10);\nie.Quit();\n<\/pre>\n
\nWe create our own instance of Internet Explorer\n\nso we can change its carpet\nwithout getting anybody upset<\/a>,\nnavigate it to the\nCreate­Process<\/code> page,\nand wait for the page to load.\nWe then use our random­walk<\/code> function to\nclick on ten successive links,\nand then when we’re done, we\n\nbring in the demolition crew to destroy the browser we created<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n
\nFor extra evil, you could commandeer an existing Internet Explorer\nwindow\nrather than creating your own.\n(Now you’re barging into somebody’s house and rearranging the furniture.)\n<\/p>\n
\nvar shellWindows = new ActiveXObject(\"Shell.Application\").Windows();\nfor (var i = 0; i < shellWindows.Count; i++) {\n var w = shellWindows.Item(i);\n if (w.name == "Windows Internet Explorer") {\n  randomwalk(w, 10);\n  break;\n }\n}\n<\/pre>\n
\nMaking the appropriate changes to random­walk<\/code> so\nas not to be MSDN-specific is left as an exercise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today’s Little Program takes a random walk through MSDN by starting at the Create­Process page and randomly clicking links. The exercise is not as important as the technique it demonstrates. function randomwalk(ie, steps) { for (var count = 0; count < steps; count++) { WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(ie.document.title); var links = ie.document.querySelectorAll(“#mainSection a”); do { var randomLink = […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-43813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-code"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Today’s Little Program takes a random walk through MSDN by starting at the Create­Process page and randomly clicking links. The exercise is not as important as the technique it demonstrates. function randomwalk(ie, steps) { for (var count = 0; count < steps; count++) { WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(ie.document.title); var links = ie.document.querySelectorAll(“#mainSection a”); do { var randomLink = […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}