[Tn5250py-general] tn5250py for screen scraping/automation

[Tim M. <x...@Ve...>]

Anyone still on this list? (-:

I've been looking for a solution to automate some access to an AS/400 program. 
At first I was looking at tn5250. Looking at it i stumbled across its python 
interface... but then learned this project was abandoned years ago. Having 
been excited at the possibilty of a python interface, however, i went looking 
for more python possibilities. I found that tn5250j has a nice looking jython 
interface... but it seems complicated to do what I want to do through a java 
swing app... 

Finally I found this little project, which also appears quite dead. I'd 
noticed it before actually, but when i saw the "planning stage" on the 
project summary page I didn't look much further. Lately I did look into the 
CVS repository though, and it appears there is quite a lot of working code 
there... it actually looks promising. 

I really don't know the technicalities of 5250, but I know python. I was just 
wondering if anyone felt like commenting on whether they think the tn5250 
code (the vt5250.py module) is complete enough to do things like:

	- automated login
	- fill in fields (and submit them)
	- read fields (which may be updated when others are filled in)

I was actually thinking of possibly building a server which would maintain
a logged in connection to an AS/400 and accept tasks which would
queue up and execute on the AS/400 sequentially by emulating user input and in 
some cases reading output screens (returning info as a report). 

It would be nice to have a pure python solution, which is easier to maintain 
and has fewer levels of complication.

-- 
Tim Middleton | Cain Gang Ltd | But the trouble was that my hysterical fit 
x...@ve...     | www.Vex.Net   | could not go on for ever. --Dost (NFTU)