The renewal maintenance has officially ended for Progress iMacros effective November 30, 2023.
This Wiki site will also no longer be moderated from the Progress side.
Thank you again for your business and support.
Sincerely, The Progress Team
Webextensions
License
iMacros End User License Agreement
Installation
Download and install the latest version of iMacros extension from the respective browser webstore. No administrative rights are required for the installation.
The extension corresponds to the free version which can be used for non-commercial purposes to record and replay small macros stored as bookmarks. Some iMacros features are only available with a Personal Edition (or higher) license. This includes file access to play macro files, read/write CSV files, and other extended functionality as detailed in the table below:
Feature | Free edition | Paid version (any) | Affected commands |
---|---|---|---|
Play macros | Only as bookmarks, up to 50 lines. | As bookmarks and files, any length | |
Record macros | Only as bookmarks, up to 50 lines | As bookmarks and files, any length | |
Save macros | Only as bookmarks | As bookmarks and files | |
Read input from CSV files | No | Yes | !DATASOURCE |
Save extracted data to file | No | Yes | SAVEAS, SAVEITEM |
Make screenshots of webpage | No | Yes | SCREENSHOT, SAVEAS |
Save stopwatch data to a file | No. Data can still be referenced in macro via the !STOPWATCHTIME variable | Yes | !FILESTOPWATCH, !FOLDER_STOPWATCH |
Profile macro performance | No | Yes | !FILE_PROFILER |
If you want to use iMacros in your business or would like to store macros as regular text files to exchange them across other versions of iMacros (Chrome, Firefox, iMacros Browser, iMacros for IE), read/write CSV files, and other extended functionality, you will need iMacros File Access. Purchase any iMacros license and download the latest File Access for iMacros Extensions module from your Ipswitch account. Current iMacros customers with an active service agreement already have access to this module.
Add File Access
Important: iMacros File Access is only available for Windows. Currently we do not offer a version for Mac or Linux. Download the installer from your Ipswitch Community account
|
First Steps
After you installed the iMacros extension in your browser you will see the iMacros icon in the toolbar. First we recommend that you look at a few demo macros. After this start recording your first own macro. To get started, a simple website like this wiki or our company website are good. To record, open the iMacros panel and click record. When you are done recording, click the stop icon either in the panel or in the browser toolbar. The iMacros icon changes to a stop button with line counter during recording and replay.
The iMacros panel has a play loop button to run macros repeatedly. This can be useful for checking a certain web page status or for web testing. While the loop is running, the current loop number is stored in the !LOOP internal variable.
Example usage: Create a macro that refreshes the current page every 5 seconds:
VERSION BUILD=1031208 REFRESH WAIT SECONDS=5
Tips for using iMacros browser extensions freeware
Some of iMacros functionality is now only available with a paid license. These are features we believe are most likely to be used in a business environment and should not affect hobby users of iMacros.
Because we think there is still a lot of value in the freeware, we would like to give you a few tips to overcome some of the limitations, if you would like to keep using the freeware for your personal tasks.
- Existing macro files can easily be copied to bookmarks through the clipboard: open the macro file in any text editor, copy its contents to the clipboard and paste over an existing bookmark macro which is open in the macro editor. If you do not have any bookmark macro, start recording to create one. Use SaveAs to save with a new name.
- Long macros can be divided in smaller chunks and played one after the other. Just be aware that variables and macro settings are reset after each play.
- Besides the 3 user variables (!VAR1, !VAR2, and !VAR3), the !EXTRACT macro variable can also be used to "park" values. Or one can make use of an auxiliary html file loaded in another tab. A dummy form like in http://demo.imacros.net/Automate/AutoDataEntry might be all you need.
- To input data from CSV files, use an html file with a table where your data is displayed on a browser tab, see below. Tag the table elements from that tab instead of reading from a file. Excel can save a worksheet (an imported CSV file) to html.
<html>
<head>
<style>
.table
{
width: 100%
}
.row .cell
{
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid black;
}
</style>
<script>
window.onload = function () {
var datasource = document.getElementById('datasource');
datasource.addEventListener('change', function (e) {
var csvFile = datasource.files[0];
var fileReader = new FileReader();
fileReader.onloadend = function (e) {
var table = document.getElementById('table');
var lines = fileReader.result.split(/\r?\n/);
var n = 0;
lines.forEach(function (line) {
n++;
var tr = document.createElement("tr");
tr.setAttribute("class", "row");
tr.setAttribute("id", "row_" + n);
var cells = line.split(/,/);
var m = 0;
cells.forEach(function (cell) {
var td = document.createElement("td");
m++;
td.setAttribute("id", "cell_" + n + "-" + m);
td.setAttribute("class", "cell");
var text = document.createTextNode(cell);
td.appendChild(text);
tr.appendChild(td);
});
table.appendChild(tr);
});
}
fileReader.readAsText(csvFile);
}, false);
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
Select CSV file:
<input type="file" id="datasource" />
<div>Table with loaded CSV file:</div>
<table id="table" class=table></table>
</body>
</html>
iMacros as Bookmarklets
|
If you are used to other iMacros versions, you might be surprised that iMacros for Chrome and iMacros for Firefox do not store its macros as text files. The reason for this is that web extensions can not access the file system. Instead we store macros as bookmarklets inside the regular browser bookmarking system.
As the macros are packed as bookmarklets, you can just drag & drop them to your bookmarks folder or bookmarks bar. This means you can take full advantage of Chrome and Firefox syncing to have your macros synced across computers. You can sync your iMacros macros just like normal bookmarks. And with the iMacros secure password encryption that means that you can even store login macros securely in the cloud.
|
Social Scripting
Users can embed the complete macro in a simple link that can be shared with friends and coworkers. Users can also embed the link on their homepage, blog and company Intranet. In this way, users can help website visitors perform certain tasks. Instead of telling visitors how to fill out a form, users can let iMacros fill out the form for them. All information is stored inside the link as a text string, and nothing is stored on our servers.
For example, click on this link to search for available flights at orbitz.
Important: Make sure the embedded macro is url-encoded using e.g. this tool.
Tip: To send macros (bookmarklets) by email, use the a link shortener service.
Command Line Support
Neither Firefox Quantum, nor Chrome provide command line information for extensions, but user "cammarin" suggested a great way to use iMacros via the command line: Embed the iMacros bookmarklet in a local web page.
- Chrome only: Make sure that "Allow access to file URLs" is enabled for the iMacros extension as shown here.
- Create a bookmark for the macro you want to launch
- Right-click on the bookmark in the browser (not in the iMacros sidebar) and select Edit
- In the URL field, copy the value of the e_m64 variable, e.g. everything between quotes where you see: var e_m64 = "..."
- Paste this value in place of the corresponding value for var e_m64 in the HTML file shown below
Example:
<html> <body onload="window.setTimeout('document.getElementById(\'criimlaunch\').click();', 1000);"> <script> var e_m64 = "UFJPTVBUJTIwSEVMTE8hJTBBVVJMJTIwR09UTyUzRGh0dHAlM0ElMkYlMkZpbWFjcm9zLm5ldCUyRiUwQVBST01QVCUyMEJZRSE"; </script> <a id="criimlaunch" href="javascript:(function() {try{if(!/^(?:chrome|https?|file)/.test(location)){alert('iMacros: Open webpage to run a macro.');return;} var macro = {};macro.source = decodeURIComponent(atob(e_m64));macro.name = 'MacroBookmarklet'; var evt = document.createEvent('CustomEvent');evt.initCustomEvent('iMacrosRunMacro', true, true, macro); window.dispatchEvent(evt);}catch(e){alert('iMacros Bookmarklet error: '+e.toString());}}) ();">Launch iMacros</a> </body> </html>
Example command line / batch file:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" file:///D:/web/test.htm
"test.htm" is the local webpage with the bookmarklet.
Alternatively, you can embed the macro source code directly into the HTML file and skip the process of creating a macro bookmark altogether (special thanks to forum user iimfun for this solution!):
<html> <body onload="window.setTimeout('document.getElementById(\'criimlaunch\').click();', 1000);"> <script> var macroCode = ''; macroCode += 'PROMPT HELLO!\n'; macroCode += 'URL GOTO=http://imacros.net/\n'; macroCode += 'PROMPT BYE!\n'; function launchMacro() { try { if(!/^(?:chrome|https?|file)/.test(location)) { alert('iMacros: Open webpage to run a macro.'); return; } var macro = {}; macro.source = macroCode; macro.name = 'EmbeddedMacro'; var evt = document.createEvent('CustomEvent'); evt.initCustomEvent('iMacrosRunMacro', true, true, macro); window.dispatchEvent(evt); } catch(e) { alert('iMacros Bookmarklet error: '+e.toString()); }; } </script> <a id="criimlaunch" href="javascript:launchMacro();">Launch iMacros</a> </body> </html>
Related forum post: How to run a macro from the command line using Chrome
Scripting Chrome and Firefox
Chrome and Firefox, can be scripted with the iMacros Scripting Interface (API) included with some of the iMacros paid editions. The API allows you to control Chrome and Firefox from external programs (C++, C#, Python, Perl,...). For details, see the chapter with the iimOpen command.
Using Chrome and Firefox with the iMacros RunAs Agent (iimRunner)
- iimRunner only works with a non-default Chrome UserDataDir or Firefox profile
- Make sure the iMacros add-on is installed in the new user profile.
- In order to launch Chrome with a different user profile via the iMacros scripting interface (e.g. iimOpen("-cr -crUserDataDir C:\MyProfile")) or with iimRunner (e.g. iimOpen("-cr -runner -crUserDataDir C:\MyProfile")), you need to allow access to file URLs:
- In the Chrome menu, go to More tools - Extensions and find iMacros in the list of extensions
- Make sure "Allow access to file URLs" is checked
::: |
Where is the iimDisplay message?
iMacros web extensions show iimDisplay messages as a desktop notification pop-up window.
Getting Help
If you run into any issues, please don't hesitate to contact us on our support forum. Take a quick look through the forum before asking your question, we might already have a solution or work around available.