I want to automate some tasks within as400 (I think it's referred to as IBM i). I managed to get some stuff done using autohotkey and directly navigating through the interface. This works alright but is far from optimal.
I wish to do some more advanced stuff now using python, the problem is, I don't know where to begin.
My first goal would be to be able to navigate the as400 window through python, once I am there, I feel confident that I can work out the rest.
I tried to look into some resources but I don't really understand them like https://www.itjungle.com/2019/06/10/guru-getting-started-with-python-on-ibm-i/.
If you are thinking in terms of "navigating the window" (i.e. going to a screen, pressing a function key, entering some text, choosing a menu option, etc.) then running Python (or anything else) directly on the IBM i isn't going to work.
Theoretically, you could use Python on your PC to interface with TN5250J or EHLLAPI, which would give you more capabilities than AutoHotkey; but this is rarely done, and there aren't any turnkey solutions for doing this in Python.
If you want to leverage Python on your IBM i then you'll need to think in terms of working directly with the files and other objects (as you would do with CL, RPG, or COBOL), or with the database (as you would do with SQL).
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Ok, so I'm a total noob with aspirations of learning to code. I've read about a guy who, for example, wrote a script which, if he was at work past a certain time, would automatically send a text to his wife stating he would be late. I want to do something sorta similar.
What I want in essence is a script that will log in to a website at a certain time of day, check if a box/text is green/yes or red/no, and send a text or notification to my phone informing me of the result each day.
The progress I've made so far is installing Python, installing PyCharm and done some research about tools I could use toward achieving my goal. Selenium seems like it would be capable of logging into the website, but I've no idea how to go about setting up a conditional statement to check the result, nor how I could set it up to send a text/notification to my phone. Also, if there is a more appropriate tool I should look into rather than Selenium and Python, I'm not attached to the idea of using these specific tools.
Finally, I realize that this may end up being too complicated for a first project, so I'd be up for hiring a freelancer to set this up. Equally, if this is something that could feasibly be written by someone with very little knowledge of coding such as myself, I'd really appreciate some direction from an expert!
Thanks for any input!
You are on the right track with selenium for web form automation. Sending notification however would require something else as was pointed out, and if you're on windows you can use windows task scheduler to automate, to performed only on certain time of day etc.
To make things more simplified, you can also look up general purpose automation programs that might support all these features together. For example, JRVSInputs uses selenium for web auto-fills https://jrvs.in/forums/viewtopic.php?t=182 and have features to send email or windows notifications. It can convert all its scripts into a neat batch file, you can then automate this batch file in the task scheduler.
I have a very old DOS application which I would like to automate. Like there are keypresses and such which if automated will help a lot as I might have to run the program over a hundred times manually.
My question seems to be very similar to this one but the solutions offered there are not very useful for me, plus it is over nine years old
Automating old DOS application using Python
Only big difference between this question and mine is that I have no option other than DOSbox for doing this. This application is set up on a lot of computers, and all the people using the application know how to use DOSBox. Migrating to Virtualbox would be a pain and very time-consuming.
I was thinking maybe if I could mechanize this somehow in python using xautomaton or uinput, but I haven't been able to figure out exactly how. The application will be running on Ubuntu primarily.
To give an idea of the application, I am attaching a screenshot:
The solution does not necessarily need to be in python. Any other language would work. Any help is appreciated.
I figured this out. Although this does not use python, to do this, I just captured the windowid of DOSbox and sent all the key presses there using xdotool. Here is an example:
wid=$(xdotool search --class DOSbox)
xdotool key --window $wid m t 5 Return Return i
Which will type "mt5", then press enter twice and then type "i"
The series of keypresses can be stored in a string or a file and called iteratively each time this has to be run. If there is a better method to do this, please feel free to answer.
I'm currently at a crossroads. I'm somewhat versed in Python (2.7) and would really like to start getting into GUI to give my (although mini) projects some more depth and versibility.
For the most part, my scripts don't use anything graphical so this is the first time I'm dipping my toes in this water.
That said, I've tried using pygame and tkinter but seem to fail at every turn to get something up and running (although I had some slight success with pygame)
Am I correct to understand that for both I need X started in order to generate any type of interface, and with that, so I need X to get any type of input (touchscreen presses)?
Thanks in advance!
In order to use tkinter, you must have a graphics system running. For Windows and OSX that simply means you need to be logged in (ie: can't run as a service). For linux and other unix-like systems that means that you must have X running.
Neither tkinter nor any of the other common GUI toolkits will write directly to the screen.
I'm gonna give an alternative answer. If you know HTML, CSS and Javascript (or have time to give it a try) I would recommend using Flask, http://flask.pocoo.org/.
With flask you can create websites but you can also (as I am using it) let it be your GUI. It will work on any device and looks really good :).
I have to setup a program which reads in some parameters from a widget/gui, calculates some stuff based on database values and the input, and finally sends some ascii files via ftp to remote servers.
In general, I would suggest a python program to do the tasks. Write a Qt widget as a gui (interactively changing views, putting numbers into tables, setting up check boxes, switching between various layers - never done something as complex in python, but some experience in IDL with event handling etc), set up data classes that have unctions, both to create the ascii files with the given convention, and to send the files via ftp to some remote server.
However, since my company is a bunch of Windows users, each sitting at their personal desktop, installing python and all necessary libraries on each individual machine would be a pain in the ass.
In addition, in a future version the program is supposed to become smart and do some optimization 24/7. Therefore, it makes sense to put it to a server. As I personally rather use Linux, the server is already set up using Ubuntu server.
The idea is now to run my application on the server. But how can the users access and control the program?
The easiest way for everybody to access something like a common control panel would be a browser I guess. I have to make sure only one person at a time is sending signals to the same units at a time, but that should be doable via flags in the database.
After some google-ing, next to QtWebKit, django seems to the first choice for such a task. But...
Can I run a full fledged python program underneath my web application? Is django the right tool to do so?
As mentioned previously, in the (intermediate) future ( ~1 year), we might have to implement some computational expensive tasks. Is it then also possible to utilize C as it is within normal python?
Another question I have is on the development. In order to become productive, we have to advance in small steps. Can I first create regular python classes, which later on can be imported to my web application? (Same question applies for widgets / QT?)
Finally: Is there a better way to go? Any standards, any references?
Django is a good candidate for the website, however:
It is not a good idea to run heavy functionality from a website. it should happen in a separate process.
All functions should be asynchronous, I.E. You should never wait for something to complete.
I would personally recommend writing a separate process with a message queue and the website would only ask that process for statuses and always display a result immediatly to the user
You can use ajax so that the browser will always have the latest result.
ZeroMQ or Celery are useful for implementing the functionality.
You can implement functionality in C pretty easily. I recomment however that you write that functionality as pure c with a SWIG wrapper rather that writing it as an extension module for python. That way the functionality will be portable and not dependent on the python website.
Hello Python developers!
I'm a Java one and I know that there is a way of running Java code on the fly, but my question is, is there any way to do that with Python?
The main goal here is to enable middle-school students to start coding with chromebooks from day one on Python.
I've been looking for some resources, but I got nothing so far.
Thanks a lot!
http://shell.appspot.com might be of your interest. (there's a link to the source code too)
Hey, I just recovered a link to a nice page I used in the past. It shows the execution flow of a Python script. Students I taught found it very useful in terms of comparing with other languages they new already, e.g. Java, how stack and arguments are being passed to the functions, memory allocations, etc:
http://people.csail.mit.edu/pgbovine/python/tutor.html
(click on "Visualize execution" button beneath the window with the code)
IPython allows you to run python interactively from a web environment. You can try a demo here: IPython. You can set this up on a local computer and have you students view it from their machines.
Coderbuddy let's you create and run AppEngine applications online, without having to download the AppEngine SDK, Python, or anything for that matter.
I use that when I do workshops, so I don't have to bother with making sure that everyone has the SDK and proper configurations in their machines. We just go straight to coding. :)