Web Alert's Tasker Plug-in

Tasker is an automation app for Android that allows programming your own automations without having to be a programmer. Tasker lets you easily set up automations such as that you want to have the Wi-Fi switched on every morning at seven and that your phone is muted when you connect yourself to your company's Wi-Fi.

The Web Alert Expansion Pack offers a plug-in so that events from Web Alert can trigger actions in Tasker or any other Tasker plug-in and allow Tasker to trigger actions in Web Alert, such as checking a website for changes.

Examples

The following is a list of use cases to give an idea of the new opportunities that the Tasker integration opens up.

States

States are conditions that can be used for running actions. Web Alert offers the following states:

Events

Events are triggers for running actions. Unlike states they are instantaneous. Web Alert offers the following events:

Actions

When the selected event or states occur then the automation app executes a task, which is a list of actions. Web Alert expands Tasker with the following actions:

Return variables

When Web Alert sends an event, reports that a condition/state is fulfilled or when an action is executed, it sends variables that can be accessed in the automation script. For both privacy reasons and performance, many variables need to be enabled (by marking the checkbox) before they are returned.

Input Variables

Tasker can invoke actions in Web Alert and include variables, which shall affect those actions. This way it is possible to dynamically set the trackers on which to operate, on what page they shall start checking and with what cookies. Trackers that fill out forms (e.g. when logging in or when using the search function on a web page) will offer those form fields so that Tasker can later decide new values for it.

This allows the creation of Web Tasks. A web task is a tracker that is actually not interested in detecting changes on a web page but uses the record and replay functionality of Web Alert as a means of doing things automatically on the web.

This web automation can be very powerful. For example, you create a tracker, starting with a product web page in an online store. You then buy this product and select the message "Thank you for your purchase" on the web page for checking for changes. You then have a tracker that will always buy this product every time it is checked, so you will disable it to prevent it from buying more.

You can create a second tracker that checks another product in that online store and watches the price. You create a Tasker profile that subscribes to its change events and select the variable of the final URL (%wafinalurl) and the content (%watext). When the price drops below a certain value, you call the tracker that buys the product and pass it %wafinalurl as the start URL. This way you have set up a system to automatically buy products on the Internet, even while you are not using your mobile.

Other automation systems

The Web Alert plug-in may work in the following automation apps: