command lines for GSA Contact Form

maximev

Hi the community,

I would like to share with you my feature request...

Don't you think that would be awesome if we could run the software with command lines...

By example I would love to be able to run the software like that...

WebContact.exe --task="c:\test.json" --write-on-success="c:\done.txt" --kill-after=60000

The file "c:\test.json" would contains information like:

File path containing list of domains

Task to do (by example: check if contains contact form, check if contains contact form then post message,...)

Message to send

...

And on success the script would create a file (in my example c:\done.txt) so my script can know exactly when the task is finished...

To avoid the software breaking any integration it could get auto killed after X ms (in this example 60000)...

I would need this feature so I can integrate GSA Contact Form with my in-house scripts... 

Am I the only one?

Thank you,

M.

Sven

hmm you can control it by the internal webserver with simply commands to create/edit/start/stop a project. But no command line as such.

maximev

Could you please tell us how to use the internal webserver?

Sven

in options you can turn it on and then also open a test url that opens a small interface.

maximev

I clicked on OPTIONS but I can't find this option therefore could you please tell me on which tab I can find it?

Sven

maximev

This is what I can see when I click on "options" Could you please tell me how I can access to the form "Program Settings"?

Sven

oh wait, this is about GSA Website Contact...I was thinking you are talking about GSA Content Generator.

Sorry, that product has no webserver or command line input. But you can schedule things in settings and tell each project when to start/stop or if it should start another project and so on.

maximev

That would be a great addition if we could control the software by using command lines or even by using a webserver.

To make it short and simple I receive in real time (24/7) domain names from a worker I created and I would like to have a way to use your software to check if the domain contains a contact form and if yes then to send a specific message based on a configuration file and all of that programatically. Is it possible to add this feature?

Moreover I wanted to look at the schedule option in the settings but my demo version expired therefore I can't see if it is a good fit for me

Sven

I guess it would be possible, though I have not much time to add such a big feature due to the lockdown here in Germany. If there is a demand from other customers, it might land on my to-do list.

maximev

I clearly understand that it might takes some time therefore let's find a workaround -- Is it possible to "say" to the software to take random files from a specific folder and those files contains 1 or several domains (1 per line)?

Essentially I would run the software once then append domains to check (and post messages) in the declared folder.

Is it possible?

UPDATE:

I saw this option:
Which could be a good solution however what will happen if let's say I append to my file my_file.txt new domains every 5 minutes? The software will resume at the last line where it stopped?

Sven

You can do this: In project options -> scheduler you have an option to import URLs from a folder/file. Just keep a project running and put your new files with the URLs in it at any time and the project will pick them up and proceed.

It will read in such file once there is nothing left to do for the project. It reads in the complete file at once.

maximev

thank you Sven I'm gonna try this solution to see if it is a good fit

maximev

I quickly checked and it seems it could be a good solution however for the moment it is possible to set a specific file containing domain names (1 line per domain) but it is not possible to set a specific folder containing file texts containing domain names (1 line per domain)

(maybe I just didn't manage to make it work) 

Sven

don't add domains but real URLs to the file.

maximev

First of all: Happy new year!

I think it is a misunderstanding as I can only provide domain names (not URL or URI)...

I would like to use your software to 1) check if there is a contact form 2) send a specific message is there is a contact form

I can provide (automatically) to your software domain names to check -- I can generate 1 text file per domain name in a specific folder or -- I can append to a text file domain names (1 domain per line)

Do you see how we can make this strategy compatible with your software?

Sven

when you can create a text file with a domain in it, whats the problem in adding a "http://" before the domain and instead writing one file per domain, append it to the end of the file.

maximev

It was simply a misunderstanding )

I tried your solution and it worked great!

However is this solution viable if my script is constantly doing I/O on the text file your software is reading? Moreover how your software will react if my text file size is 1GB or more?

Sven

Once there is no target left, it will start reading from that file and import everything + dedupe. If you think it was read by now, you can as well remove everything from it and just create a new file.

maximev

That could work however I need a way to receive a notification from your software to know when a line from the file has been processed (so I can remove it and do whatever I need to do with it) or even better you can simply add a way to get the files containing the URLs/URIs from a specific folder and each time a file has been processed you can delete it (if user requested it).

I think with this method it would even work if I got millions of URLs/URIs and you can give the options to your clients to select a random file from the folder/ select the oldest file from the folder/ select the newest file from the folder / select the biggest file from the folder and based on a checkbox delete the file after processing finished. I think that would be a great addition to your software.

Does it make sense to you?

Sven

you could monitor the prj file itself and check if it contains the url you have added to the import file.

maximev

Could you please tell me the default path for the prj file?

Sven

c:\users\<login>\appdata\roaming\gsa website contact\projects\

maximev

thank you very much!