AutoGrantRec

• Author: Claire Chung
• Last update: 20 Sep 2022

This auto-filler script takes in a pre-filled Excel spreadsheet grant record to fill the grant record section in the RGC grant application. It was written in Python 3 and first built for a grant application in 2019, and reused in 2020 and 2021. To ease future work for fellow grant applicating PIs, the script has been generalized to take in custom User ID, Password, PI name and input Excel file. A template Excel file goes along with this script.

This script comes in both a command-line (CLI) and a graphical user interface (GUI) version, where the CLI is cross-platform (Windows, Mac or Linux where Python 3 has been installed) and more lightweight, whereas the GUI version could be more intuitive to users unfamiliar with the terminal. This GUI version serves as the basis of a standalone package, which does not require prior installation of dependencies, but starts up more slowly.

Dependencies

Python3 packages

• selenium: webdriver
• pandas: table handler
• xlrd: Excel handler
• openpyxl: Excel handler
• gooey: creates GUI from CLI program

Install Python3 package prerequities by

• CLI: python3 -m pip install selenium pandas xlrd openpyxl
• GUI: python3 -m pip install selenium pandas xlrd openpyxl gooey

Chrome driver

• Check your Chrome browser version from "Help > About Chrome"
• Download chromedriver that matches your OS and Chrome browser version from https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads
• Unzip the downloaded package and note the path to the chromedriver e.g. '/Users/ChanTaiMan/Downloads/chromedriver'

Usage

CLI

python3 auto_grant_rec.py -u USER_ID -p PASSWD -n "CHAN, Tai-man" -c /path/to/chromedriver -i yourinput.xlsx

GUI

• python3 auto_grant_rec_gui.py
• Fill in the relevant fields

Remarks

• This script first clears any existing record before filling the form according to your input file.
• When using the CLI version, add double quotes around PI name to let the argument parser read the whole name containing space as one argument.
• The browsing may get stuck, e.g. at the proposal menu, in some rare occasions due to browser request timing issue. Just rerun the script and this should be solved. (Not observed this year)
• Note that the headless mode skips showing the browser pop-up to free up the screen, runs faster, but has a higher chance of Timeout error.
• Please ignore spelling errors of the GUI version due to incomplete display from auto GUI building with the Gooey package.

License (MIT)

Copyright 2021 Claire Chung

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished
to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL
THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.