I need an "alert" type feature to troubleshoot an error. I am not using a browser and using javascript as windows administaration purposes. So is their a way to view a varibales value if I am not using a browser?
JScript is a scripting language based on the ECMAScript standard.
JScript is implemented as a Windows Script engine. This means that it can be plugged in to any application that supports the Windows Script host, such as Internet Explorer, Active Server Pages, etc. It also means that any application supporting Windows Script can use multiple languages — JScript, VBScript, Perl, and others.
For reasons that I am not sure about, but I believe it to be related to the fact the the DOM is not available outside the browser, the alert function is also not available outside the browser. In order to popup a dialog box to the user in this case you can use the following code:
WScript.Echo('The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog');
If you want a windows GUI popup, then:
var timeout = 0;
var buttons = 0; // OK
var icon = 48; // Exclamation
var shell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
shell.Popup("text ...", timeout, "window title", buttons + icon);
and run your jscript program with the wscript command.
Microsoft JScript language reference.
Popup documentation.
On windows, you can use Windows Script Host to execute your javascript. It has a built in ability to do output, using Echo. There are some nuances though, since WSH uses jscript, not javascript, though the languages are similar.
A summary of the differences between WScript.Echo and WshShell.Popup:
Windows scripts (vbs, js, wsf etc.) can be run under one of two hosts: cscript.exe (command-line), and wscript.exe (graphical). Under cscript, WScript.Echo will produce a line of text in the console window. WshShell.Popup will always produce a message window, even under cscript.
WshShell.Popup lets you specify the buttons, title and icon type, like the VB/VBS MessageBox function. It also lets you specify how long the message should remain open.
WScript.Echo lets you pass multiple string arguments to output, and will print them separated with spaces.
You can create a simple file that will alert text that is passed to it, for example in python. I don't think there is any way to do this in Javascript though without a browser.
No with javascript. You can, using Visual Basic Script and MsgBox function. No need to install anything.
'In Hello.vbs. Comments starts with '
MsgBox "Hello there"
Look at HTA files. These file types allow you to run typical HTML/VBScript/JS code without the need for a browser specifically. Just rename your HTML file to an HTA extension and run it. IT will show your "page" and execute any JS necessary. This type of file will give you access to other WScript functions as well like creating Files or accessing AD if required.
Related
Is there some way I can programmatically (in VBS) OR by using CMD/RUN open the 'Open' dialog that contains the places bar and a browser but without opening say notepad or MSpaint?
http://i.technet.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC354177.jpg
I'd like to use this on the desktop itself, it would be really cool if there was a DLL I can just use instead of having a VBS file but if not i'm sure its possible in VBS.
I'm busy searching where the actual open dialog box comes from, it should come from some DLL file somewhere.
I might even consider stopping the windows shell from opening all together and just using this open window as the shell on some computers.
Regards, Rocklore
What version of Windows are you on?
"UserAccounts.CommonDialog" was the way to do this in XP. But it no longer exists in Windows 7. You may be able to use some of the flags available for the BrowseForFolder() method to make it look like a file open dialog. See this page for an example.
XP Edit:
Here's an XP example using UserAccounts.CommonDialog.
With CreateObject("UserAccounts.CommonDialog")
.InitialDir = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").SpecialFolders("Desktop")
.Filter = "All Files|*.*"
' Show the dialog. If [Open] is clicked, save the name of the selected file...
If .ShowOpen Then strFile = .FileName
End With
I need to write a huge VBscript to automatically run an application and I'm looking for a way to comfortably monitor what I'm actually doing, in other words, to display the values of some/all variables involved in my script.
I'm used to work with Matlab, where I have a comfortable workspace browser. When I run a Matlab script, all variables, their types and their values are accessible in that workspace and can be checked.
The VBscript I write with Notepad++ (it needs to be a free editor) and the only way I found to display variables was echoing them via wscript and cscript.
I set up the shortcuts.xml with the following line to run my script directly from Notepad++:
<Command name="Run with CScript" Ctrl="yes" Alt="no" Shift="yes" Key="116">cmd /K %windir%\system32\cscript.exe "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)"</Command>
In case I include commands in my script like
Wscript.Echo myVar
Wscript.Echo "Hello World!"
and run it with the newly introduced shortcut, a cmd window pops up and displays the value of myVar and "Hello World!".
But the next time I run the script a new window pops up. So my question is:
Is it possible get a continuously opened output window, displaying all echoed values everytime I run a script? I actually want to put the window on a second screen and keep the values from previous runs. So I can enter a line Wscript.Echo something, run, check, enter something else and so on, without fiddling around with a bunch of opened windows.
Alternatively, is there any open-source/free editor which offers an accessible workspace like the one in Matlab?
The open-source editor SciTE offers what I was looking for.
The default settings in vb.properties enable a similar behavior like in Notepad++
command.build.$(file.patterns.wscript)=cscript "$(FilePath)"
command.build.subsystem.$(file.patterns.wscript)=1
One can change it as follows to get the output into the integrated console.
command.go.$(file.patterns.wscript)=cscript.exe //nologo "$(FilePath)"
command.go.subsystem.$(file.patterns.wscript)=0
F5 runs the script and Shift+F5 cleans the output.
Another option is the NppExec Plugin for Notepad++ suggested by #Ansgar Wiechers, which adds a console. The script can be run with cscript.exe /nologo "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)" then.
Use a debugger. Start your script with the (meta)option //X. If you are lucky, you already have installed software (MS Office, Visual Studio (Express)) that provides a debugger for VBScript. If not do a bit of research to find an Express version suitable to your OS.
You can almost write native VBScript in the VBA editor, so if you have Excel or whatever you can use this to debug, then go through some steps to convert back to VBScript. That's what I usually do.
Note: This is a question-with-answer in order to document a technique that others might find useful, and in order to perhaps become aware of others’ even better solutions. Do feel free to add critique or questions as comments. Also do feel free to add additional answers. :)
How can I display a messagebox by typing a single Windows command, e.g. in the Run dialog from the Start menu, or in the [cmd.exe] command interpreter?
One way is to use apparently undocumented functionality, namely that [mshta.exe], the runtime engine for Windows .hta HTML applications, accepts a general URL as command line argument, including a javascript: protocol URL:
mshta "javascript:var sh=new ActiveXObject( 'WScript.Shell' ); sh.Popup( 'Message!', 10, 'Title!', 64 );close()"
This command can be issued in e.g. [cmd.exe]], or e.g. in the Run dialog from the Start menu, perhaps combined with the schtasks command to create a tea-timer…
The above messagebox times out after 10 seconds, but specifying a 0 second timeout means “don’t time out”, producing a more ordinary persistent messagebox.
For a simpler messagebox you can instead use the alert function provided by the MSHTA host.
on command prompt:
msg %username% Message
interesting parameters are:
/w (wait for user)
/time:<seconds>
Found that if you copy msg.exe from a Win7 Pro machine to a Win7 Home machine it works. Copy msg.exe to and from the C:\Windows\System32 folder.
What if you create a small VBScript with the message you want to display?
I.e. create e file, named "Message.vbs" with the content:
MsgBox "Some info here", 0, "Message Title"
and call it like this:
cscript.exe PATH\Message.vbs
I have a Vbs script to install network printers at my place of work. The only issue is that it needs to be hard coded with the printer and server name every time I want to use it. So as a solution I was trying to figure out if I could make a simple Windows form with a text box or drop down list that would simply push the input from there into the vb script and then run it. I can't figure out how to do this for the life of me though. Here is my VB script Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\wcprt02\S100a"
'objNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\wcprt02\L30b"
Your options are:
Use WScript.Arguments to pass (a few) parameters to your script started with cscript.exe from a console (DOS Box)
Read the arguments from a file (maintained via the editor of your choice; or Excel if you prefer)
Use InputBox to gather (a few) parameters via simple dialogs/pop-ups
Write a .HTA application presenting a GUI for (maybe many) arguments; pass them to your code embedded as a function/sub in the .hta
Write a .NET Forms application presenting such a GUI; you could then shell out to your script, but why not stay in .NET and avoid the mixing of technologies?
Is there any method in JScript to get the handle of the main window of a process by providing the process name? The Process.MainWindowHandle property works only in JScript .NET. Is anything similar available in classic JScript?
I am not sure if this works, just try to loop window.parent until its undefined.
something like -
var mainWindow = window;
while( mainWindow.parent ) {
mainWindow = mainWindow.parent;
}
you also have something like window.top which always returns you the topmost window. But not sure if this is supported by all browsers.
JScript and Windows Script Host don't have this functionality, and neither does WMI.
If PowerShell is an option for you, then you can use the Process.MainWindowHandle property you mentioned:
(Get-Process notepad).MainWindowHandle
Otherwise, you'll need to find or write an utility (COM object, command-line tool etc) that would provide this functionality, and call this tool from your script.
Edit: So you need to close the window — that's a UI automation task.
Windows Script Host provides very limited UI automation functionality. If you know the window title, you could try using the AppActivate to and SendKeys methods to activate that window and send the Alt+F4 shortcut to it. You can find an example this answer. (The code is in VBScript, but it should give you the idea.) However, this approach isn't reliable.
If you really really don't want to kill the process, the easiest solution is to use some third-party UI automation tool. For example, you could try the free AutoIt tool — I think it should be able to accomplish what you need.
Edit 2: Have you tried recording the closing of the window? You should get a script like this:
Sys.Process("notepad").Window("Notepad", "Untitled - Notepad").Close();
Isn't this what you need?
For a native win32 application, there is no such thing as a "main window". A process can have no windows at all, or several top level "main" windows.
Well once i had to write a add-in for Outlook. My boss wants a splash-screen to appear when Outlook loads. But Outlook window goes over the splash. After a lot of search i found FindWindow http://msdn.microsoft.com/query/dev10.query?appId=Dev10IDEF1&l=EN-US&k=k%28FINDWINDOW%29%3bk%28TargetFrameworkMoniker-%22.NETFRAMEWORK%2cVERSION%3dV4.0%22%29%3bk%28DevLang-CSHARP%29&rd=true this is help for it . This function finds window based on window caption and window class name. I p-invoked it and used it from C#. If you can use this function through JScript I think it could do the job for you. (I used Spy++ for finding lpClassName parameter)