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Tutorial 1: Page 8: Writing a Simple Script in Interpreted Java

Writing a Simple Script in Interpreted Java

screen-scraper uses the BeanShell library to allow for scripting in Java. If you've done some programming in C or JavaScript you'll probably find BeanShell's syntax familiar.

Let's get right to it. Copy and paste the following text into the box labeled "Script Text":

// Output a message to the log so we know that we'll be writing the text out to a file.
session.log( "Writing data to a file." );

// Create a FileWriter object that we'll use to write out the text.
out = new FileWriter( "form_submitted_text.txt" );

// Write out the text.
out.write( session.getVariable( "FORM_SUBMITTED_TEXT" ) );

// Close the file.
out.close();

Hopefully it's obvious what's going on, based on the comments in the script. We simply create an object used to write out the text (a "FileWriter"), write it out, then close up the file. Note the session.getVariable( "FORM_SUBMITTED_TEXT" ) method call, which retrieves the value of the "FORM_SUBMITTED_TEXT" session variable. This method call is able to get the value because we indicated earlier that the value for the "FORM_SUBMITTED_TEXT" token was to be saved in a session variable (i.e., when we checked the "Save in session variable?" box).

If you haven't done much programming, this is where things might seem a little confusing. If so, you may consider trying a basic tutorial on Java or JavaScript, which will hopefully introduce you to the basics of programming. You'll especially want to get an introduction to object-oriented programming.