How to enter text into the "Write something..." box on Facebook and click Submit
- by Peter Payne
Hello, I am trying to manipulate Facebook pages in various ways, using Javascript browser elements. I'd need to be able to insert some text into the top "Type something..." box that shows on my site's fan page (or alternately, "click into" the field and I can type the text using GUI scripting), then click the "submit" button as if i'd done it by hand. It's tricky since the page is very Ajax heavy and I can't find the names of the elements I need to manipulate, let alone how to manipulate them as they're not using traditional form fields I'm used to. Can anyone help me figure out how to do this with javascript commands, which I'd be calling from Applescript on the Mac?
Many thanks in advance.
UPDATE
Thanks for the comments below. Believe me, I am not trying to do anything spammy or douchy, mainly posting links to products that have gone live on page facebook page, but do it during the business day when people are on rather than at strange hours of the day. I am located in Japan so my sleep period is right when people are using FB.
The solution I came up with for clicking the button was got using UI Browser, an outstanding tool if you're trying to script on the Mac. The script that clicked the button for me was:
tell application "Safari"
activate
set thename to name of (get current tab of window 1)
delay 3
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Safari"
try
click button "Share" of group 1 of group 2 of list 3 of group 9 of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of group 3 of window thename -- this one works on the mini?
on error
click button "Share" of group 1 of group 2 of list 3 of group 9 of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of group 2 of window thename -- did not work
end try
end tell
end tell
end tell
Hope this is useful to anyone.
