I need to run a series of repetitive tasks against a web site. Basically, I want something to click though a number of buttons, fill in a value, in a sequence a set number of times. I could hire some poor soul to do this, but it’s my own online banking portal* & I’d rather have some software do the pointy clicky thing against my own account. I reckon there must be some test automation utility that I can utilise, preferably for very little outlay (free?). Anyone recommend anything?

*yes there is malfarious intent. Muhahahah.

Cypress.io is probably the quickest and easiest to set up, it’s free

https://selenium.dev/projects/

Though reading the post fully, you will probably have to do some jiggery pokery to get past the banks log in.

ie:

1. have the script open the site at the login page
2. locate user name and password
3. wait for a bit
3a. manually fill in the security stuff (I am assuming they will ask you for a bunch of random numbers or something from a passphrase or the like
4. wait for the wait to finish
5. interact with the bits that you want to fiddle with.

All of this requires a bit of basic knowledge about how websites work, finding locators on the page and doing stuff with them

Awesome. I’m used to fiddler and tracing what a website is actually doing in the back end. Should be relatively simple.

Before the morality police jump on this, it’s to pay a bill for a useless property maintenance company, in the most annoying, cost-inefficient way I can think of. Did it manually before and I got bored at around 100 transactions.

I’ve done a very similar project, using python and the dryscrape module. Relatively easy if you are familiar with python and web technology, but you will definitely spend more time working on the code than making a payment several hundred times.

On second thoughts, just send me the details and I’ll make the payments for you 😉

I think I’d be looking at the KVM side of things rather than the website.

Something like this maybe (random Google hit not a personal endorsement): https://www.macrorecorder.com/

That might be a better way to do it! 👍

I’d be surprised if you don’t set off some alarms at the bank by making repetative transactions… make sure its not your only account in case they lock you out.

By the way, this is a terrible idea. You could create a macro that repeats the sequence of mouse moves to make many payments, the webpage loads a little slower or maybe starts rendering a little differently, and suddenly you’re sending your money somewhere else. The same applies for any method of website automation.

You would think – or at least, hope – that a bank website would make this sort of shenanigans difficult if not impossible. (Though my experience of banking sites would rather suggest that this isn’t always the case…)

It’s being sent from a special account that only has one payee, no overdraft and only the money on the bill in it.

I’m with cougar on this. The chances of the bank’s software intervening in any meaningful way are minimal. I sent about 150 payments of less than 35p (The Receiver is NatWest, it costs 35p per transaction at their end) over about an hour manually last time & my bank didn’t blink. My dastardly plan is to upscale that quite a bit, but it still has to be done using the human interface, at human interface refresh times. It’s not like I can talk to them over an api.

It’s not like I can talk to them over an api.

Give it 3 months. (google Open Banking PISP).

Selenium

But getting something reliable does take a bit of coding skill, I’d not want to let it loose on my bank and I know what I’m doing.