Automate web form filling to export report reports

Question

I have a daily task of downloading a Report[an Excel file] . Before I click the download button, certain fields have to filled and some checkboxes need to be checked. On clicking the executable file on my desktop, the whole process must happen in one go. I m looking for an opensource solution either in Javascript or JQuery to automate this download.

Answer 1

After the information you shared, I'm afraid you'll have to write an application in a desktop programming language. It doesn't really matter which language you use, and I'm not going to make suggestions since I don't know your situation.

The fun part will be determining what the browser does. The browser will basically send a HTTP request, either a POST or a GET (I don't know which one it is since I don't know the page). You'll have to open your developer tools in your browser, check what it sends and how it sends it and where it sends it, then recreate that using your language of choice. You then need to read the response and turn it into an excel file.

Now, this is quite challenging and I don't know how experienced you are. If you are willing to give up the desktop executable requirement, you can write a Greasemonkey script (in Firefox) or a Chrome extension (for Chrome, duh) which can automate this from the browser. Both use Javascript and are arguably easier to create since you don't need to recreate the HTTP request or reverse engineer what the browser does.