RPA Challenge

📖 Overview

The goal of this project is to provide a production-ready Python solution that:

1. Solves the RPA Challenge, a popular benchmark for RPA developers. This task involves extracting data from an Excel file and entering it into a web form with randomly placed fields - ten times.
2. Is Docker-ready, allowing the solution to run easily across environments.
3. Supports both headed mode (for visual debugging) and headless mode (for fast, efficient execution).

** This was created on Windows, so some commands are Windows specific.

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🐳 If You're Using Docker

⚙️ Setup

1. Download Docker if needed: https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/
2. Download a VNC viewer if needed. I used Remote Ripple: https://remoteripple.com/download/
3. Open Command Prompt
4. Navigate to Downloads:

   cd %USERPROFILE%\Downloads

5. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/bkocsis3/rpa-challenge.git

6. Change into the repo folder:

   cd rpa-challenge

7. Build a Docker image using the repo Dockerfile:

   docker build -t rpa-challenge .

🏃Running the Solution in headed mode (for visual debugging)

1. Run the new image to create a container:

   docker run -d -p 5900:5900 --name rpa-challenge-con rpa-challenge

2. Using your VNC viewer, connect to the new container using localhost:5900 & 'secret' as the password
3. Execute the Python solution

   docker exec rpa-challenge-con python rpa-challenge.py --headtype=headed

4. Watch the automation in your VNC viewer

🏃Running the Solution in headless mode (for fast, efficient execution)

• Default command

  docker run --name rpa-challenge-con python rpa-challenge.py

or

• Explicit command

  docker run --name rpa-challenge-con python rpa-challenge.py --headtype=headless

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🐍 If you're using Python

⚙️ Setup

1. Download Python if needed: https://www.python.org/downloads/

2. Open Command Prompt

3. Navigate to Downloads:

   cd %USERPROFILE%\Downloads

4. Create a virtual environment:

   py -m venv rpa-challenge-venv

5. Activate the virtual environment:

   rpa-challenge-venv\Scripts\activate.bat

6. Install dependancies:

   pip install pandas requests selenium openpyxl

🏃Running the Solution in headed mode (for visual debugging)

    py rpa-challenge.py --headtype=headed

🏃Running the Solution in headless mode (for fast, efficient execution)

• Default command

  py rpa-challenge.py

  or
• Explicit command

  py rpa-challenge.py --headtype=headless

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💡Improvement Ideas

• Add error handling to the Python solution
• Add a way to set a new VNC password for better security