how do i automate a website

[RBCC]

This website has two arrows one to advance the videos and another to go back, how do I automate the clicking of the arrows to advance? John

[_Al_]

look into javascript

[Baldrick]

You can use http://www.autohotkey.com to make automatic clicking scripts.

Or are you making your own streaming site?

[RBCC]

I'm just trying to progress to the next video every 50 minutes. Without touching the keyboard! John

[_Al_]

You pick up ready web player that supports playlists, like jwplayer, maybe flowplayer, and there is perhaps others, maybe for free did not check lately. I was fiddling myself with jwplayer in the past when clicking a web page button loaded playlist into jwplayer. That is done by javascript and some (basic) API knowledge , that means what to write in javascript that jwplayer understands. Advantage - supports old browsers where it can fall back to flash if there is no HTML5 supported in browser. Disadvantage - javascript needs to be enabled in browser, player will not load with "No script" browser plugins enabled and such.

Nowadays, I'd look into HTML5 players and what it can do with playlists. HTML5 is modern HTML code, not javascript. Google "HTML5 video player playlist", there are some solutions, but lots of them uses javascripting anyway so go figure.

[Baldrick]

_Al_: That might be useful if you working with your own website and video...but this doesn't sound like that.

RBCC: It is not that simple to automate browser/flash players. http://www.autohotkey.com/ Is probably the easiest solution...but I have never used it.

[_Al_]

Oh, yes, sorry, he has a given website ....
I was using winautomation software for a while, that has a feature to fire some action (like mouse click) on screen if certain picture, graphic symbol, etc., or something appears on screen, it can automatically click a button on screen again, like button for playing of another video. I was surprised how fast and accurate it was actually performing ...

[TreeTops]

Not sure any of those mentioned will do what he wants: "progress to the next video every 50 minutes". (see post #4) That sounds like a special timing script to jump to the next video every 50 minutes. Maybe a javascript or PHP script can do it. I don't know of any ready made scripts that can to it. You would have to find a person that knows scripting to do it for you.

But some unanswered questions like: Is every video exactly 50 minutes in length? If the answer is no then what happens when one of the videos is only 20 minutes long? If video is 60 minutes long then 10 minutes is not shown and player jumps to next video?


I really don't quite understand why the exact timing request.

[racer-x]

Maybe he's watching videos from his tablet hooked up to TV and doesn't want to get off the couch to click next. Just a guess......