Helper app for intranet site

[kevinlcarlson]

I'm exploring the possibility of developing a helper app for an
existing internal company website. Basically, it would automatically
scan the current page contents, including prepopulated forms, and
provide context-related business rule comments to the user, via a stay-
on-top wxPython panel. Any suggestions on how to do this? (The web
developers are unavailable to do this within the site.)

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message

I'm exploring the possibility of developing a helper app for an
existing internal company website. Basically, it would automatically
scan the current page contents, including prepopulated forms, and
provide context-related business rule comments to the user, via a stay-
on-top wxPython panel.

Seems like a roundabout way of doing it. Can’t you integrate into the server
code which is generating the page contents, instead of trying to reverse-
engineer those contents?

 

[kevinlcarlson]

In message


Seems like a roundabout way of doing it. Can’t you integrate into the server
code which is generating the page contents, instead of trying to reverse-
engineer those contents?

Absolutely - that would be the best way to accomplish this.
Unfortunately, our group has no access to the web server and the
developers have this functionality scheduled about a year into the
future, but we need it ASAP. Also, our group would like to be in
control of the code and business rule contents, rather than wait for
updates from the busy web team...

So far, it looks like PAMIE could be a good choice for the page
scraping code - it includes WinGuiAuto.py which could be used to
identify the correct window handle and parse the contents. Business
rule data could be stored locally in Sqlite, since it changes rarely
and there is a small user base... Does this seem like the right track?

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message

Absolutely - that would be the best way to accomplish this.
Unfortunately, our group has no access to the web server and the
developers have this functionality scheduled about a year into the
future, but we need it ASAP. Also, our group would like to be in
control of the code and business rule contents, rather than wait for
updates from the busy web team...

Conway’s Law: any piece of software reflects the organizational structure
that produced it.

 

[kevinlcarlson]

In message





Conway’s Law: any piece of software reflects the organizational structure
that produced it.

Hard to disagree with that sentiment - I've come across a fair amount
of disorganized software in my day...
In any case, I'll try the WinGuiAuto approach and see how that
works...