Fake Is Fun

Fake[1] is so much fun. I expect to do a lot more with this. It really does make me giddy for some reason. Maybe because I’ve been doing some of this with Python scripts and it’s very difficult to do well.

Fake is like Automator for the web. But it’s better than that. It’s graphical programming for the web. It can automatically find and populate forms. It can submit logins and extract content. If you have any interest in throwing together little tricks to extract content from a site, then Fake is worth the price tag.

Here’s an example of automating the process of extracting some lorem Ipsum from Fillerama and putting it on the clipboard. To select an element, I hold down control and drag the mouse from the action in the sidebar to the form I want filled out.

 

 

The widget then provides an option to select the form value to use.

 

The last few actions submit the form and grab the specified content (also a control drag to select) an put it on the clipboard.

Of course, the macros can be as complex as needed, and execute custom JavaScript or XPath. Elements can be identified in a large number of ways and there are actions for looping and performing logical evaluations of content. Over all, Fake is a tool disguised as a toy. Much like Automator.