RE: Introducing InRb -- custom Ruby interpreter for web clients
- From: "Sina Bahram" <sbahram@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 15:57:39 -0400
One quick note on security, please be careful when using such an old browser as
Firefox 3.6. it's two very major versions behind,
and Mozilla themselves have stated that neither backwards compatibility nor
backwards patches for security is in any way their
goals.
Jamal, thanks for the new contribution as always.
Take care,
Sina
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jamal Mazrui
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 3:47 PM
To: ProgrammingBlind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Introducing InRb -- custom Ruby interpreter for web clients
Now available at
http://EmpowermentZone.com/InRb.zip
InRb
Beta 0.5
July 7, 2011
Copyright 2011 by Jamal Mazrui
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
InRb (short for Interactive Ruby) is a custom Ruby interpreter (version
1.87) for Windows. It focuses on the ability to run scripts that invoke
web clients to gather information, filling out forms along the way if
necessary. It includes Ruby libraries (also called gems) for controlling
Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Mechanize -- an API without a user
interface.
InRb.exe is not a typical executable, but a bundling of the Ruby
interpreter with both standard and additional libraries. If run without
parameters, it loads the traditional, interactive Ruby environment called
IRB. If a Ruby script file is passed as the first parameter, it will be
executed by the interpreter. Startup and shutdown of InRb are slow, so it
is not meant for quick tasks. It may retrieve useful information from the
web, however, with much more convenience than manual operation of a web
browser.
InRb may be installed in any directory, e.g., by unzipping the
distribution archive into
C:\InRb
Only the 3.6 version of Firefox is currently supported, and it requires an
add-in that is included. An easy way of installing it is to enter the
folloing in the Windows Start/Run dialog:
firefox C:\InRb\jssh-3.6-WINNT.xpi
Firefox will prompt for confirmation, and then restart with the add-in
enabled.
The initial examples may be tried by running the batch files
run_explorer.bat, run_firefox.bat, run_mechanize.bat, and run_report.bat.
The first three use command-line parameters to display the definition of
the word "browser" from wiktionary.org, retrieved via Internet Explorer,
Firefox, or Mechanize, respectively, and then shown in the default text
editor. The fourth example uses Mechanize and the Ruport library to
display a sorted HTML table of results from a Google search on "best
browser."
A large collection of text tutorials on the Ruby programming language is
available at
http://EmpowermentZone.com/ruby_doc.zip
To script InRb, knowledge of the Watir, Mechanize, Nokogiri, and/or Ruport
gens is needed.
I welcome feedback, which will help to improve InRb over time. When
reporting a problem, the more specifics the better, including
Windows/browser version and steps to reproduce the problem.
Jamal
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