[davidbiehl]

I used to work for a small medical device distributor. We used an e-commerce platform that, at the time, didn’t have an API. We wanted to synchronize our products with their platform as products were added, discontinued, copy/image changes, etc.

I ended up using capybara (a Ruby gem for writing browser automation instructions for system tests in web apps) to automate all of the “clicks” to make the updates in the system.

It actually worked pretty well. It wasn’t fast, but it was better than having a human keep the data in sync.

After a few years, the platform released a REST API, and we transitioned to that. But browser automations worked great in the meantime!

edit: spelling