What's the Best Way to Handle Scripting Under XP?

ChrisZermatt asks: "I've got to build a custom workflow for a customer that has a photography business. His photographers take hundreds of thousands of photos a year, and since he's recently moved entirely to digital, he wants to automate a lot of his current processes. Ideally I'd be able to plonk a recent Mac running Tiger into his shop, and use a combination of AppleScript, iView Pro, Photoshop and an FTP program to handle all his needs. Sadly, he insists on using *cheap* PC's running Windows, so a Mac isn't an option for this project. So, what should I use on the Windows side of things to build a custom workflow?" "iView lets you control the program using VBS or Javascript, but they don't really offer much in the way of advice on building a Windows workflow. I need to be able to copy/move a ton of files around and link the above mentioned programs. I'd really rather *not* spend money on something like VisualBasic. What are the alternatives for scripting on Windows?"

Comments

AutoIT

[acaldwel]

Take a look at http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/. It can automate windows GUIs and you can convert your scripts to .EXE files for easy of deployment.

-Adam

Windows Script

[neura]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/

You're joking right?

[Ahnteis]

Nope, you're not. [sob]

Windows Scripting

Also happens to be the first result on Google for "windows scripting host".

Python + Win32CoM

[Gopal.V]

The last windows scripting I did was to convert a PHB excel spread sheet into a bugzilla report. It was converting the typical shared spread sheet on a folder share variety of bug reporting into proper bugzilla-like one (there are better ways, but it works).

More over I like python - it has win32com which is damn easy to use, at least with Excel objects. Writing the script took me less than a day, while entering the bugs manually would have taken me over a week (imagine 2200 bugs of varying severity, and descriptions). The real challenge was to convert the OLE objects into attachements (screenshots, logs..). Truly they were idiots for maintaining all this in a SINGLE EXCEL File !!.

But the point being, python+win32com is as easy as any other windows scripting host. Looks like there's python support for Photoshop as well.

Python is an average general purpose language. It's not fast like C++, doesn't have something like CPAN , nor is it very complicated or interesting. But it is often easy to write, read and throw away (or upload to your hacks/).

Re:Windows Scripting 101

[the_seal]

Seconded.

My only "programming" experience was some light VBA, I was able to pick up VBS in no time, mostly using Microsoft's site and help file http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/

There are also site's out there with plenty of code ready for use and a buttload of books.

http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript/default.asp
http://www.ss64.com/wsh/functions.html

KiXtart

[Halvard]

KiXtart is about the greatest thing since sliced bread. From the home page:

What's KiXtart

The KiXtart free-format scripting language has rich built-in functionality for easy scripting. It also supports COM (providing access to ADSI, ADO, WMI, etc) and thus is easily extensible. With the amazing KiXforms GUI for KiXtart, there is so little, if anything you can't accomplish with KiXtart.

And because of the User Defined Functions (about 500 ready UDF's on korg already), there is very little you need to code by yourself as much of the complex things have already been coded for you!

KiXtart is developed by Ruud van Velsen of Microsoft Netherlands

KiXtart is now provided to you as CareWare. Please see "KiXtart: Do You Care?" for full details.

It's pretty incredible, it's free, it allows you to do things you can't otherwise do at login with paying a lot of money (and did it sooner I believe), is written by an MS employee.