Network Monitor - Automate IE

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Network Monitor - Automate IE

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These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.

They are retained here for archive purposes only.

Network Monitor - Automate IE // Interactive Artwork

Post by early // Sep 17, 2008, 6:11pm

early

Total Posts: 46

The whole network monitor project is an attempt to use the 3D space to visualize interesting (to me) realtime or near-realtime data and events. That's why I've started by coding the tools that bring the interesting data into trueSpace.

I ran across this snippet of code on a MSDN forum. It uses Internet Explorer (InternetExplorer.Application) to open a specific web page, and then find and follow a link to a second page. The demo object will open Google's front page, and then Google Business Solutions. Big deal, we could have just followed a shortcut, right?

But look what this piece of code is doing:

...

objIE.Navigate("http://www.google.com/")

WaitForLoad(objIE)

Set objDoc = objIE.document

Set objElementCollection = objDoc.getElementsByTagName("a")

leCount = objElementCollection.length

For leIndex = 0 To leCount-1

Set objElement = objElementCollection(leIndex)

If (("http://www.google.com/services/")=objElement.href) Then

objElement.Click()

End If

Next

...

We've gone to Google, and then the script reads the entire webpage into a data object (Set objDoc = objIE.document) that is now exposed to our script, and to trueSpace.

Just think about it.

Post by Norm // Sep 17, 2008, 7:21pm

Norm

Total Posts: 862

Have you investigated the html control in panel editing mode? Just curious if you had a chance to investigate it yet. :)

Post by early // Sep 18, 2008, 4:38am

early

Total Posts: 46

Yes, I did. But as far as I could tell, it is only useful for displaying data in the LE window. I want to be able to 'read' the page programatically, so I can visualize information from it in 3D space. The HTML control accepts a string argument (or string array, as TrueBlue demonstrates with trueExplorer)(Thanks, TrueBlue) but I couldn't find any outputs.

There are better ways to access the structure of the target page then the one I used here. The xmlHTTP object that I used in GetURL2File would likely be better for that limited purpose. However, having a trueSpace-controlled instance of IE will allow many other ways of interacting with the 'real world' of the web.

Disclaimer -

I'm not a professional programmer, although I've been programming for a long time for fun. I am not an Windows expert, so there are probably fifty better ways of doing anything. I'm likely to show up one day with a brand-new, off-round, crudely carved wooden wheel that I'll be overly proud of. Feel free to smack me down. :)

Post by frootee // Sep 18, 2008, 4:58am

frootee

Total Posts: 2667

Hi early. Check out this thread.

There may be information useful for your projects. The posts can be lengthy but there is a lot of good information there related to truespace and the web.

http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=4082

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