Feb

Automating Browsers with Selenium

Feb 25, 2013

Automating browser actions from an external script is easier than you think.

The answer: Selenium.

Selenium is a browser automation tool suite which is compatible with several popular browsers, such as Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Opera. It is primarily written in Java, but it also has extensions for Python and Ruby.

Building on my Python and Javascript experience, my experience was mostly painless for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Getting the extensions is fairly easy, and source code was straight forward. I really like how I can grab html objects by id OR class or xml. Here is a very simple example of using the Selenium python extension to 1) open Firefox, 2) navigate to google.com, 3) enter text into the search box, then 4) hit enter.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get('http://google.com')
assert 'Google' in browser.title
searchBoxes = browser.find_elements_by_id('gbqfq')
searchBoxes[0].send_keys('hello' + Keys.RETURN)

from selenium import webdriver

from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

browser = webdriver.Firefox()

browser.get('http://google.com')

assert 'Google' in browser.title

searchBoxes = browser.find_elements_by_id('gbqfq')

searchBoxes[0].send_keys('hello' + Keys.RETURN)

12 years ago Short URL Comments

browser automation/chrome/firefox/internet explorer/selenium

Feb

Migrating WordPress the easy way

Feb 05, 2013

UPDATE
I now advise using interconnectit’s php script method instead of the method below, because it’s more reliable.

If you search on Google, there are tons of tutorials on migrating WP. I found all of them hard to follow and overly complicated. Follow these simple steps to easily move a WordPress (WP) website:

1) Copy the WP root folder to the new location

2) If also migrating the db, use phpMyAdmin to export the WP tables from the old db and import them into the new

3) Point a browser to the new WP location. It should work, but all of the db is still pointing to the old WP location so we have to fix that

4) Run these sql commands in phpMyAdmin:

update wp_posts set post_content = replace ( post_content, "<old website location>", "<new website location>");

update wp_posts set guid = replace ( guid, "<old website location>", "<new website location>");

update wp_options set option_value = replace ( option_value, "<old website location>", "<new website location>");

update wp_posts set post_content = replace ( post_content, "<old website location>", "<new website location>");

update wp_posts set guid = replace ( guid, "<old website location>", "<new website location>");

update wp_options set option_value = replace ( option_value, "<old website location>", "<new website location>");

5) Last, make sure you setup mod_rewrite on your new web server if you are using mod_rewrite on your old one.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Web-Dev

php/phpMyAdmin/sql/wordpress

Jan

Setting phpMyAdmin to point to an Amazon RDS instance

Jan 09, 2013

Isn’t it annoying how you can’t ssh in to Amazon RDS instances? Don’t you wish there was a way you could use trusty old phpMyAdmin to manage your db? Here is the easy way to do it:

Find the endpoint link to your RDS server. It’s found in the instance information section. It usually looks something like this: xxx.amazonaws.com
Install phpMyAdmin somewhere. I recommend on a webserver so you can access anywhere.
cd phpMyAdmin
sudo cp -p config.sample.inc.php config.inc.php
Change this line in config.inc.php:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'localhost';

1	$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'localhost';

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = '<link found in (1)>';

1	$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = '<link found in (1)>';

That’s it!

12 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Web-Dev

amazon/phpMyAdmin/rds

Jan

CloudFormation templates: Old vs. New

Jan 08, 2013

I’ve been using Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a while now, and have recently started using their new product called CloudFormation. CloudFormation is a must-have solution if you find yourself setting up the same web stack frequently. First you setup a template for your stack, then you let CloudFormation setup your stack for you. I’ve now used it several times for WordPress + RDS stacks, and it has saved me a tremendous amount of time!

That said, I don’t like the new example template for WordPress + RDS stack. I find overly-complicated, because it askes for many parameters which are unnecesary and not straight forward. If you are having trouble with the new template, I highly recommend trying the old one here.

Tip: The example WordPress+RDS templates disallow micro RDS instances. This sucks because it bumps you out of the free usage tier. If you want to stay in the free, just add db.t1.micro to the allowed values of DBclass in the template. I already did this for my template I posted above. For small websites, the db.t1.micro works just fine!

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Web-Dev

amazon/cloudformation/rds

Jan

Namescheap and DNS settings

Jan 08, 2013

I started using Namescheap lately as an alternative to GoDaddy. Namescheap is awesome for how clean and straight forward it is. I do pose a warning though: their documentation for the DNS settings is somewhat misleading and confusing, and their default settings are probably not what you want.

The Options:
URL Redirect (default) – URL Frame Forwarding – A-address – URL Redirect – 301

My advice: If you want this domain to have the browser redirect to another domain, use URL Redirect. You will notice in the address bar that the original domain you entered will change to the redirected domain. If you are using the domain name as your primary, then use the A – address option.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

Web-Dev

dns/nasmescheap

Jan

Hello world!

Jan 07, 2013

Welcome to my blog: powered by WordPress and based on Matthew Buchanan‘s theme “Esquire”.

This blog serves as my memoir of interesting tech issues I encounter. By documenting my experiences, hopefully I’ll be smarter next time.

12 years ago Short URL Comments

About

The Dombro Show

Automating Browsers with Selenium

Migrating WordPress the easy way

Setting phpMyAdmin to point to an Amazon RDS instance

CloudFormation templates: Old vs. New

Namescheap and DNS settings

Hello world!