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October 2001

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This page contains an archived post to the Java Answers Forum made prior to February 25, 2002. If you wish to participate in discussions, please visit the new Artima Forums.

Message:

Two Questions

Posted by Matt Gerrans on October 28, 2001 at 5:45 PM

On the first one, since it sounds very much like you are only interested in solving this problem on the Windows platform, I would say this is not a job for Java. If the client(s) offer OLE automation, then it would be a snap in C++/Delphi, Python, or even JScript and yes, VBScript (ick!). On the otherhand, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that someone made some tools for using OLE automation with Java (maybe there were some with MS's Visual J++, that can still be used).

On the other hand, if the apps you are talking about don't support OLE automation, then you could only (easily) call their functions if they are exported. Even in that case, you don't really know how to call them (what order, what parameters, etc.), so that would be a mess. And with MS and AOL in a bitter jihad, I think they probably both include lots of misleading and confusing exported functions just to confuse the other, since they are probably disassembling each other's program on every release.

You could try with a higher-level tool, like WinBatch, where can set the focus to the app and send it keys, etc.

On the second one, I'm not completely sure what you mean. I've used some programs that present a file manager-like UI for FTP. Is that what you mean? Or do you mean that if you browsed to a web site, it would show you all the files it can see in a list view, rather than opening the default (index.html, or whatever). Or do you mean it would read the default html file and look all its anchors, displaying them in a list/tree? Or do you mean you would need a servlet at each desired server that would serve up a list of directories and files?

- mfg



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