I am working on video lessons about the software. At the moment I have made only two, but I plan to make the next ones faster.
BrowserAutomationStudio. Lesson #1. Introduction. Standalone gmail checker.
Perfect for understanding how it works. Everything is shown with examples; during the lesson I created a simple gmail checker (whether an email is registered or not).
List of topics:
BrowserAutomationStudio. Lesson #2. Selectors. Finding elements. Twitter feed parser.
Everything you need to know to create a parser. Again many examples; I created an image parser from the twitter feed. Those who don't need to parse complex pages can watch up to minute 26.
List of topics:
BrowserAutomationStudio. Lesson #3. Resources. Working with files in multithreading.
The video covers all the subtleties of working with data through the resource system: reading and writing files, including in multithreaded mode, the user interface, distributing proxies among threads.
List of topics:
Description of the resource system. Resource of type "string". Getting a resource value on the developer's side. Resource of type "number". Resource of type "random number". Resource of type "string generator". Spintax. Resource of type "From file". Reading files. Writing to a file chosen by the user. File reading modes. Working with strings from several threads. Working with files (images) from a folder in multithreaded mode. Error handling when using resources. Getting several resources in one thread. Working with proxies. Checking a proxy for validity. Additional resource settings. Manually deleting lines from a file. Performing actions at the start of the script (before launching threads). Parsing files with a complex format into a resource. The regular expression constructor. Resources with several types. Appearance of the user interface. Resource of type "List". Basics of the javascript expression constructor. Conditional visibility of resources.
BrowserAutomationStudio. Lesson #4. Variables. Using javascript.
This is an important video; it tells about variables, the expression format, and how to use javascript code in BAS.
List of topics:
What are variables. Variables as the result of actions, the variable inspector. Using variables. Variable types. Creating variables of different types. Input parameters of the expression type. Using javascript functions. Comparison operators. Example: checking the page source for a stop word. Getting the type of a variable. Type conversion. Example: getting the number of likes on a page. Setting several variables at once. Executing arbitrary js code. Creating multi-line variables. The "Template" action. Global variables. Example: ending the script after a set time. The special value null. A variable of the object type. Parsing an api response. JSON.parse
BrowserAutomationStudio. Lesson #5. The javascript constructor.
A video about how to create complex javascript expressions using visual programming. The main principle and many examples are shown.
List of topics:
Description of the constructor. The simplest examples of using the constructor. Simple operations with numbers. Using variables in the constructor. Example: building a url. Using blocks with arbitrary code. Example: parser of latitude/longitude of cities. Example: a filter for the twitter parser. Example: string formatting.
BrowserAutomationStudio. Lesson #6. Conditions. The If action. Twitter poster.
In this video: theory about conditions, creating a twitter poster with many conditions and checks. This is the first more or less large project created on video.
List of topics:
Conditions, theory. Example. Finding an image on a site. How to build expressions for if. Twitter poster. Iterating over all accounts. Ignoring errors. Making the code more readable. Using functions to simplify the script. Checking the date of the last tweet. Using labels. Posting, checking success of execution. Saving a screenshot in case of an error. Switching to multithreaded mode.
BrowserAutomationStudio. Lesson #7. Loops. Poster from an RSS feed.
In this video: about repeating actions, loops, automatic upload to youtube, improving the poster created in the previous video — now tweets are taken from an rss feed.
List of topics:
When the need to use loops arises. The for loop. Loop bounds, the CYCLE_INDEX variable. Reading from a file line by line. Using expressions as a loop bound. The foreach loop. The browser loop. Breaking a loop. Waiting for an event using a loop. Example: uploading a video to youtube. Using labels together with a loop. Improving the twitter poster, adding rss parsing.
BrowserAutomationStudio. Lesson #8. Multithreading. Many examples.
In this video: everything about multithreading, multithreaded image upload, auto-login using global variables, exchanging data between threads.
List of topics:
Running in single-threaded mode. Single-threaded mode, several executions. Ending a thread with an error. Running in 2 threads. Ending the script after a resource runs out. Stopping via the "Interrupt script" action. Example: image poster from a folder to imgur.com. OnApplicationStart. Exchanging data between threads. Example: gmail auto-login. Synchronous and asynchronous actions. Lock, performing actions in one thread. Performing different actions in threads, exchanging data. Exchanging data via a list and global variables. Improving the twitter poster, additional checks, allocating one thread for the parser and the rest for posting.