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The beginners guide to the BAMC Language

This section is designed to help you get started with the BAMC Language even if you have little or no prior coding experience. We'll focus on simple, practical tasks and walk you through them step-by-step.

Here, you'll find:

Your First Steps

Let's begin with some fundamental commands. Each command below shows you what to type and explains it in simple terms. Remember, you'll put these lines into your BAMC script file!

Script 1: Open a Browser and Visit a Website

This is how you tell your script to open a web browser and go to a specific internet address. 

browser "chrome"
visit "https://www.google.com"
wait-for-seconds 5
What each line does:
  • browser "chrome": This line tells your script to use the Chrome browser to perform the actions. (You could also use "firefox" for the Firefox browser).
  • visit "https://www.google.com": This command opens your chosen browser and takes it to the Google website. You can change "https://www.google.com" to any website address you want to open!
  • wait-for-seconds 5: This tells the script to pause for 5 seconds. This is useful to give websites time to fully load or for you to see what's happening.

Try it yourself: Copy these lines into a .BAMC file and run it. Your browser should open, go to Google, and wait for 5 seconds before closing (or moving to the next command if you add more).

Script 2: Visit a Website and Take a Screenshot (wikipedia.bamc)

Sometimes you want to save a picture of what's on the screen. This script shows you how to do just that. 

browser "chrome"
visit "https://www.wikipedia.org"
wait-for-seconds 2
take-screenshot "wikipedia.png"
What each line does:
  • browser "chrome": Starts Chrome.
  • visit "https://www.wikipedia.org": Goes to the Wikipedia website.
  • wait-for-seconds 2: Waits for 2 seconds to ensure the page loads.
  • take-screenshot "wikipedia.png": This command takes a picture (a "screenshot") of your browser screen and saves it as an image file named wikipedia.png on your computer. You can open this image file later to see what was on the screen.

Try it yourself: Run this script and check the folder where your BAMC script is saved for the "wikipedia.png" image file!

Script 3: Searching for Deals on eBay (ebay.bamc)

This script shows you how to open eBay, type something into the search bar, click the search button, and then save the results page to your computer. 

browser "chrome"
visit "https://www.ebay.com/"
wait-for-seconds 1.5
fill-text "#gh-ac" "Awesome deals"
wait-for-seconds 1
click "#gh-search-btn"
wait-for-seconds 10
save-as-html "ebay-search.html"
What each line does:
  • browser "chrome": This line tells your script to use the Chrome browser.
  • visit "https://www.ebay.com/": This command opens the eBay website in the browser.
  • wait-for-seconds 1.5: A short pause to help the page load.
  • fill-text "#gh-ac" "Awesome deals": This is how your script "types" into a box on a website.
    • "#gh-ac" is what's called a selector (Don't worry too much about how these work for now, just know they point to specific parts of a webpage!)
    • "Awesome deals" is the text your script will type into that search box.
  • wait-for-seconds 1: A single second pause after typing.
  • click "#gh-search-btn": This command "clicks" on something.
    • "#gh-search-btn" is the selector for eBay's search button.
  • wait-for-seconds 10: We wait a bit longer here to make sure the search results page loads completely after clicking the button.
  • save-as-html "ebay-search.html": After the search, this command saves the entire webpage you're currently looking at as an HTML file named ebay-search.html on your computer. You can open this file later in your web browser to see the results.

Try it yourself: Copy this script into a BAMC file, run it, and see if you get an "ebay-search.html" file with your search results!

Where to Go Next

You've now seen some foundational things your BAMC scripts can do!