Question

I want to scrape text data from a windows application to do additional processing using existing ruby code. Would it be possible to scrape the data as it is updated in the windows application using Ruby and where do I start?

Answer 1

If the text is in a standard windows control you can get at it with AutoIt. It’s a scripting laguage of it’s own and you can interact with it’s functions in Ruby, like this:

require 'win32ole'
STDOUT.sync = true

App = "calc.exe"
AppClass = "[CLASS:SciCalc]"    # retrieved with AutoIt Window Info

ai = WIN32OLE.new("AutoItX3.Control")
ai.run( App )
ai.winwaitactive( AppClass )
handle = "[HANDLE:#{ai.wingethandle(AppClass)}]"

until ai.winexists( handle ).zero?
  puts ai.controlgettext( handle, "", "Edit1" ) # retrieved with AutoIt Window Info
  sleep 1
end

This opens an instance of “Calc” and displays the content of the text control every second.