Aliceword - Radio Alice Automator

Automatically Enter the Word of the Day

Well, not anymore. Why? Well, first off Alice vastly restructured how their word / bonus code system worked, rendinring the script moot. And while I did consider rewriting the tool, I realized that I wasn't using the Alicepoints for anything (because their system was subpar), so, uh, yeah. That said, I really liked my implementation of the automator, and it was being used by over 100 users a day, easily my most popular web creation to date. So to assuage my abandonment guilt, I've archived the scripts and interface here. You can play with the final working version, but it won't work when you submit (though you can add users, etc).

How it worked

The automator ran on two files:

1. aliceword.html.
   
   The interfaace and javascript are in this file
2. aliceword.pl
   
   The perl script that interfaced with the Radio Alice web pages

aliceword.html

The users information was stored in cookies, as I didn't want to be responsible for a datbase of users logins. I didn't even want to know the logins, and storing the data in cookies kept my hands clean, and indicated that I was on the up and up to potential users. This is before I knew anything about AJAX or anything like that. And frankly, it's probably better that I didn't.

So what did the interface do?

• Automatically submitted an alice word of the day or bonus code for the user or users.
• Allowed the operator to add as manay accounts to the process as needed. So for one submit press, the word / bonus code would be submitted to multiple alice accounts at once.
• The additional accounts could also be disabled on a per use basis, so that single use codes could be entered without conflicting with other users on the operators list.
• Had a link to the forum where all words / bonus codes were posted daily. No need to actually get up at 7 to listen to the radio.
• Looked pretty.

aliceword.pl

The perlscript was created thanks to the O'reilly Perl & LWP book. My Perl syntax knowledge is mediocre, and this book showed me exactly what I needed to do. Seriously, it's an excellent handbook.

So what did the script do? You can view the source, or read my english language step-by-step. Or do both.

1. Get the info from the submitted form
2. Submit the login information to the Alice login form, and get the cookie that was returned to authenticate the sucessfull login.
3. Take the authenticated cookie to the form that prcessed the word of the day and bonus codes, to prove that this was a logged in radio alice user user.
4. Submit the word / bonus code to the form
5. Return the page showing sucess / failure of the submission as well as the total points in the account.
6. Repeat for all users in the operators list

Nothing too fancy, but it what it did, it did just fine.

Todo List

Features that never made it in:

• Encrypted Cookies
• A better results page with links to the Alice Catalog and other Alice support features
• Automatically filling in the word of the day