Integrating The World Exits Page With A Mud Client / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Integrating The World Exits Page With A Mud Client.

Zmud Script

Dubious 24 Jun 2008 14:19

Hi guys,

I just made a hack Zmud script to read the world exits on the web page.
It works for me is all I can say. If someone else tries it, let me know how it goes.
It is based on (is almost a direct copy of) the eq database script from Froggy.

#ALIAS wikiexits {wikiprogress = 1
#VARIABLE wikiobject %comcreate( "InternetExplorer.Application")
wikiurl="http://retrowiki.wikidot.com/world-exits"
#CALL @wikiobject.Navigate(@wikiurl)
#ECHO Looking for Wiki exits…
wikicheck 0}

#ALIAS wikicheck {wikitimeout=25
#IF {!@wikiobject || %1 > @wikitimeout} {#ECHO Timed out!
wikiprogress=0
wikiobject=0} {#IF {@wikiobject.ReadyState==4} {wikiprogress=0
#ECHO {%copy( @wikiobject.document.body.innertext, %match( @wikiobject.document.body.innertext, "collected data"), %eval( %match( @wikiobject.document.body.innertext, "dates are in utc") - %match( @wikiobject.document.body.innertext, "collected data")))}
wikiobject=0} {#ALARM {+1} {wikicheck %eval( %1+1)}}}}

Re: Zmud Script

xyzzyn 24 Jun 2008 21:12

Cool! I haven’t been able to test it because the %comcreate function fails in Wine, but it looks very nice.

Re: Zmud Script

madSimon 24 Jun 2008 22:10

Trying to use it on Cmud and I instantly get

Looking for Wiki exits…
Timed out!

Going to play with it a bit and see if I can figure out what the issue is. It's obviously not timing out, so it appears to be having trouble instantiating the wikiobject variable.

Last edited on 24 Jun 2008 22:11 by madSimon Show more

Re: Zmud Script

madSimon 24 Jun 2008 23:32

Wow. Mystery solved. Cmud prefers the syntax
#IF (expression) {true-command} {false-command}

I changed the brackets to parenthesis and it worked like a charm. Formatting could use some love, but it works.

Output:

Looking for Wiki exits…
Collected data
PlanetShaftStatueShip
Cryptgydlag
Perdow6keytoh
Raji9bioesh
Sosel0tembar
Welstar7,SPInep
Wysoom8alt
DateJun-24Jun-24Jun-24

Last edited on 24 Jun 2008 23:33 by madSimon Show more

Re: Zmud Script

loktai 25 Jun 2008 01:17

It's bad coding to use the a=b syntax, since some of us (cough cough me) disable that in their client so as to not accidentally make variables.

Also yeah, you'll need to clean up that syntax or it'll be confusing :P

EDIT: Also, what about us crazies who don't want to comcreate ie (comcreate ie creates a memory leak that eventually makes zmud unable to function - that's the biggest beef I had with froggy's db macros)

Last edited on 25 Jun 2008 01:20 by loktai Show more

Re: Zmud Script

madSimon 25 Jun 2008 18:18

Here's a slightly more readable version that also addresses the comcreate memory leak and the variable definition syntax. What it doesn't address is the ugly output, but we may need to think about the input as well.

wikiexits

#VA wikiprogress 1
#VA wikiobject %comcreate("InternetExplorer.Application")
#VA wikiurl "http://retrowiki.wikidot.com/world-exits"
#CALL @wikiobject.Navigate(@wikiurl)
#ECHO Looking for Wiki exits...
wikicheck 0

wikicheck

#VA wikitimeout 25
#IF (!@wikiobject || %1 > @wikitimeout)
{
    #ECHO Timed out!
    #VA wikiprogress 0
    #VA wikiobject 0
}
{
  #IF (@wikiobject.ReadyState == 4)
  {
    #VA wikiprogress 0
    #ECHO {%copy(@wikiobject.document.body.innertext, %match(@wikiobject.document.body.innertext, "collected data"), %eval(%match(@wikiobject.document.body.innertext, "dates are in utc") - %match(@wikiobject.document.body.innertext, "collected data")))}

    #CALL @wikiobject.Quit

    #ALARM {+2} {#VA wikiobject 0}

  }
  {
    #ALARM {+1} {wikicheck %eval(%1 + 1)}
  }
}

Errors and stuff

Dubious 25 Jun 2008 04:40

Yeah, it's nasty. When I was looking at the original script from the eq database I had to remove most of the comments, error checking and formatting just to figure out how it worked.

The only part I'm still not happy with is using almost the same %match command 3 times to find the right piece of text. If anyone knows a shorter way to do that, let me know. I think maybe the regex command, but not sure how it works.

Since the output is not very pretty with this method of capturing the web page as text, I don't think it's worth writing a more friendly script right now.

Also, no, I don't know any other way than using comcreate. I'm not a programmer, I'm not even sure why any of this works. I'm just good at hacking up what other people have done.

Re: Errors and stuff

loktai 03 Jul 2008 23:22

i'm pretty sure comcreate is the only way, but there has to be some method of closing IE when the call is complete (or even just using firefox, which doesn't suffer from mem leaks nearly as much as IE does X-x)

EDIT: It looks like madSimon has fixed the leak issue for sure. Now let's start cleaning up that godawful output! ;)

Last edited on 03 Jul 2008 23:23 by loktai Show more