Here's what I want to be able to do:
Run a program on my local computer which logs in to a citrix server (using citrix receiver or doing so in a similar way), on the server in the citrix session open a web browser, load a website, and then bring the html of that site back out of the citrix session and onto my local computer. Bascially I want to get data out of a citrix remote session.
How can I do this programmatically?
I'm fine with whatever programming language/modality you are comfortable in answering the question using.
I've looked a little into the citrix apis but while I find some things about logging in and even sending keystrokes and mouse clicks I found nothing about obtaining data. I could just log in and then use a program like wireshark to get the information, but I'm guessing it's all encrypted (plus then I wouldn't be doing my task all programmatically). I know of at least one open source program which seems to be able to replace a citrix reciever/client (openthinclient.org) but before I got digging through all its source code to try to answer my question I thought I'd ask here in case someone had an easier answer.
If all you want is to automate the task, is having the program act as a citrix client necessary?
I assume you don't have install privileges inside your citrix session, so are unable to install one of the many automation tools available (such as http://docs.seleniumhq.org/)?
Given the above...
If you have/allow java on your local machine, have a look at http://www.sikuli.org/
The main difference between this and other automation tools I've come across is that Sikuli uses the image on screen to navigate the gui, rather than grabbing calls to the widgets (which wont work in a citrix session).
So, assuming you can take a screenshot of your citrix session, it could be useful to you.
Related
Currently I am working on the development of CATIA by C++ and Automation Interface. Everything is based on local environment of every client machine. After updating our program, clients have to deploy it manually after receiving the updated one.
We are considering if there is a way we could put our program on the server, and we assign the authorizations to the specific clients to access it. They still need install CATIA in their local machine, but our customization programs are on the website.
Our program is based on COM component, so this is a priority.
Any feasible idea?
Thanks in advance.
I'm developing programs for Catia too (VB .NET) and there might be a solution to use webbrowser to manage the programs but I'm unable to help with that :)
Instead what I use is selfdeveloped feature which updates the tools exe files on client from network storage or FTP.
Think of it as algorithm which searches certain folders or storage and decides if the program should update itself and lets the user know. Then you run the updater which is not part of the tool (separate program) and he make the changes on the main exe (copy files, config, remove add etc.)
This way you don't have to take care of the deployment and the user only clicks the update. That's it :)
I successfully developed an application through BLPAPI (Bloomberg API) on a Bloomberg Terminal machine (in Python). Unfortunately my company is thinking to switch to Bloomberg Anywhere...I will have the chance to run my application there?
With a move to Bloomberg Anywhere from open Bloomberg, you will have the same access to data that you had before. However, you will need to keep the following in mind:
Authentication will be linked to an individual person instead of a Username/Password. This means that the person who owns the Bloomberg login will need to be physically present at the machine to login using their fingerprint on the Bloomberg keyboard, a b-unit, or our newly released b-unit mobile app (for recent versions of android).
Your app will no longer be limited to running on the current machine only. You will now be able to install a Bloomberg access point and use your application on any windows machine as long as you have the person present as described above to log into the box.
Once logged in you will have data access for a few days, however if the Bloomberg anywhere user logs in to Bloomberg on a separate machine, then the machine with your python application will immediately lose access to data. To regain access, the Bloomberg anywhere user will have to re-login to the original machine.
hope this helps
Yes. Just be sure that the user logs in every so often. The API will work when a user is connected and even after they disconnect, for a while.
Yes, it should work fine, we've done some applications under BBanywhere.
The only issue I've seen which you should contemplate before going live application is ensuring that if you're moving it off the main box and it's a non-technical party using the service on a laptop or something, that the appropriate python install and dependencies are set up (ie. conda, blpapi, etc.) I've seen some people comfortable enough to run the script or app, then run on laptop or other computer under anywhere all of a sudden that doesn't work because the dependencies aren't there.
We're experiencing problems spying a Citrix window.
Our team is not able to spy the outline of the Citrix application window once it is launched. We tried full-screen, on the desktop, on the laptop, closing all other windows, and numerous other scenarios. I believe that it is because the sign-in is via internet explorer and once the Citrix application is launched, the application detaches from Blue Prism.
We were working to troubleshoot this issue and are trying to set up a separate business object for the Citrix window. Another problem is that we cannot launch the Citrix .exe file because it does not allow us to input any parameters to log-in that way. We’re now looking into saving the Citrix file as an .ica file (see https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX804493).
Does anyone have any suggestions?
You'll need to use Surface Automation techniques in order to interact with applications launched via Citrix. Essentially bitmap mapping.
If you are having difficulty attaching to the citrix window itself, try using a dedicated application like citrix receiver and have Blue Prism launch that application.
You could also try checking the windows process running (.exe) once citrix is launched via IE, and then try attaching to that process.
Good Luck.
Try using System Internals process monitor to make sure you attach the correct application, download it for free from Microsoft
When you work with Citrix it depends on the mode you are using. Some of the windows will actually be separate windows, use the Active Accessibility mode to spy them. Some other "windows" or tabs are only visual and you will need to use the Region mode to interact with them.
You should probably be aware that BP has a known issue not flushing all unused memory until the process is finished. If you have a large scale SA process that requires a lot of image processing, OCR etc. it should be a design consideration.
Background:
One of my clients' websites has become a malware infested hotbed.
Disposing of the malware has proven difficult and time consuming, and, in the meantime, we still have had to do work on the site.
For now, we went to some trouble to do our work - creating a disposable VM to just run a web browser, so we can see what the site looks like for the designers' work, for example.
I'm wondering if there's an easier (and faster) way to get an idea what the design of the site looks like. Not everyone on the project is tech savvy enough to be trusted with, for example, properly handling switching VMs.
Question:
Is there a method for safely seeing what a malware infested website looks like (for example, a service which will browse the site for me and send a screenshot), one which ideally is easy and simple enough to use that I can trust our non-tech-savvy designers to user?
You might take at look at Internet Archive: Wayback Machine to see if the site has been archived.
If a screenshot is all you need, there are several online browser simulators, such as Net Renderer (which will run any inputted web URL in a given version of Internet Explorer and then supply a screenshot). You might also try BrowserStack, which requires an account, and is not free, but does have a free trial period, and offers more than Internet Exploder.
You could also try running a browser in Sandboxie, which is simpler to set up and use than a VM (you just install it, and then use the windows right-click menu to launch any program in a sandbox of your choosing). However, it isn't free for commercial use.
I don't know if exist a standalone tool to parse a website for malwares, but I think this can help you, it's a google tool that you can you with a request and they will send you a response.
Follow the link:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=168328
Hope it helped.
I have some scripts (AutoIt) browsing YouTube for list of trending videos etc. It involves no mouse clicks (just keystrokes). The script takes a long time to finish and I can't use my PC during this time (it needs the window activated to work on it).
Is there anything I can do about this? Can these scripts run from a server or some stuff like that?
I've run into a similar problem: got to run automation with AutoIt on a Windows Server and the whole thing had got to be headless. Using Remote Desktop simply didin't work because then I'd had to keep a client opened and maximized all the time.
Short solution: install a VNC server in the Windows Server, open a client from another computer, log in and close the client. As the AutoIt script was being started by a Jenkins job, before closing the client the Jenkins applet had to be started via web interface.
By the way, I've had this idea from this post: How to run remote headless GUI automation.
As Johannes said, AutoIt probably wouldn't be suitable (and likewise AutoHotkey), but you could check out the many GUI and web testing frameworks that exist for other languages. With some of those, you can run a "headless" browser (a program that navigates the web just like a browser, but has no visible window); or you can run a standard browser on a virtual display like a Xvfb X11 server. This would be easiest if the server (or wherever it's going to run) is running a Unix-like OS, but it may be possible with Windows too.
Selenium Webdriver seems to be a very popular choice for scripting and testing actual browsers. It's natively Java but has bindings for languages like Ruby. It can also hook into something called HtmlUnit, which is also Java; that's one of the more popular headless browsers. Another (a relative newcomer) is phantom.js, which is in Javascript but (again) has bindings for other languages.
As far as I know this will not work unless the user account is logged on. You could try to see if you could convert it to an exe and run this as a service, but even then I don't think this will work. Let me know if you found out!
You can either:
Hide your window (SetWindowState #SW_HIDE) or something like that...
and use ControlClicks (if the they are original controls!)
or
Hide your window and use SendControl
or
use SendKeepActive
or
use OLEObjects like ie.au3 for automation.
Good Luck