How I Automated My Job with Python Scripts

My previous job was full of meaningless tasks, one of which was filling out forms periodically. These forms were very repetitive and long, which meant two things: they were boring and time consuming. One specific form took about 5 hours to do, because it had approximately 50 parts, each of which had to be filled out separately by hand. Because these forms were online and consisted of a lot of repetitive tasks (typing in a box, selecting from a drop down menu, checking boxes, etc.), I thought to myself: why not automate this task using my previous coding knowledge?

a snapshot of the actual code I used to automate my job

What does the code have to do?

Before writing any code, I felt it was important to first break down the essential steps of the code:

• Navigate to the form online
• Log in as myself
• Fill out the form
  - Search for element, then choose element from a drop down menu
  - Type in a box
  - Check boxes
• Submit the form

Now that we have a general outline for the code, we can begin writing!

Frameworks

Language

I chose to use python for this project, because it’s the language I can write the fastest in, and also has modules I can take advantage of for this project.