# Re: what can you automate with Ruby?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-what-can-you-automate-with-ruby/67897>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [September 7, 2006, 6:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-what-can-you-automate-with-ruby/67897 "2006-09-07T18:55:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Frank\_Davis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/a9adbd/32.png) [@Frank\_Davis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Frank_Davis)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2006, 6:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-what-can-you-automate-with-ruby/67897/1 "2006-09-07T18:55:35Z")

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On Windows, there are lots of options, depending on what program you  
wish to automate (I’m not qualified to comment on other OS options).  
Many programs have a COM (Win32OLE) interface that allows you to  
remote-control it from Ruby. Some examples that come to mind are  
Outlook, Excel, and Internet Explorer (you can find examples of these in  
Ruby Garden). There is also a progrogram called AutoIt, which allows you  
to launch programs, send keystrokes and mouse clicks, etc. to other  
software. AutoIt has a COM interface, so that you could (for example)  
make a call from Ruby to AutoIt via Win32OLE, telling AutoIt to send  
Keystrokes to Notepad. One program I use, ThumbsPlus from Cerious  
Software, doesn’t have a COM interface, but can be controlled via an  
older technology called DDE, which you can access from one of the Win32  
libraries in Ruby. Another program I have, Pagemaker, doesn’t have a COM  
or DDE interface, but it has a scripting language, and I can control  
Pagemaker by using Ruby to generate a script and launch Pakemaker with  
the script as a parameter.

I hope this gives you some ideas. None of these techniques are not  
unique to Ruby, but are very useful if you have a lot of automation to  
do, especially when you are able to use more than one technique.

Frank