Advent Challenge #4

[Pablito (Pawel Wozniak)]

Welcome to the 2020 Advent Challenge #4!

All users are welcome! (You can still join. You don’t need to participate in previous challenges)

Earn Stars to increase your chances to win a prize
More info here .

Santa needs your help again! After he left from Copenhagen he visited a lot of kids in many cities and decided to make a little break in Rome Here, he has a meeting with his good friend. He would like to show him the two places where he would like to spend his holidays after the Christmas season. But our dear Santa got a virus on his computer and the images are now encrypted and completely unreadable.

We need to help Santa to decode those images and get coordinates of these encrypted locations inside so that Santa will know the destination paths!

*Please include in your reply which challenge you are solving - “Beginner” or “Advanced”

Beginners Advent Challenge #4:

• Task:

  • decode the file → Image for Begginers
    • you can use any website or this library given by a helpful elf → Library File (library will place image called “DecodedImage.jpg” on your desktop)
  • after you get the name of the place from the image, get coordinates of it using automation and extract them to the Output panel.
    • Coordinates can be grabbed from any site you want

• Upload evidence (screenshot/s) that you successfully obtained the results using UiPath.

  • Suggestion:
    For image decoding → show the used method and properties of encoded image file.
    For coordinates → Share a screenshot of your ‘write line’ results for coordinates
  • Your XAML file as an evidence would be appreciated

Tasks don’t need to be made in single project. You can have one project for image decoding and another one for getting the coordinates based on string with encoded place.

Advanced Advent Challenge #4:

• Task:

  • decode file → Image for Advanced
    • use a native VB or C# method
  • read place name using OCR
  • use automation to go into Google Maps, search for a place you got with OCR and extract coordinates to console output

• Upload evidence (screenshot/s) that you successfully obtained the results using UiPath.

  • Suggestion:
    For image decoding → present some screens with code needed for decoding image
    For coordinates → show the way how you grabbed coordinates from Google Maps
  • Your XAML file as an evidence would be appreciated

Everything needs to be made in one single project

Deadline:

Submissions must be posted in this thread and will be accepted until 2020-12-12T22:59:00Z

Bonus points will be awarded for Star Wars references, creative solutions and responses

[jeevith (Jeevith Hegde, Ph.D.)]

Santa is fed up with the constant harassments of Hackers. He knows the right person for this bounty…

Mando wishes for more micronized Beskar Iron for Christmas and Santa wants to get rid of hackers. Match made in heaven?

1. Mando first loads up his armor because encoded strings fight back with vengeance like the Empire!. He first converts the text into Bytes and then to image file and saves it.
   

   

2. Next Mando does what he does best; look for locations far and wide to travel. Here he employs a different approach rather than trying to find the needle in the haystack, he chooses to find if the dark planet which contains beskar! i.e., uses a country list to see if that exists in the OCR string. Success! He knows now where the location is.
   

   

3. Google knows everything about Mando, so he does not care and he searches for the location in Google Maps anyways. Looks like the location Santa is heading to …
   

   

The main file LocationLocationLocation.xaml invokes three Wokflows.

“This is the way, Santa: 64.5944444,-28.1791174”

Here is my submission for Advanced Advent Challenge #4. Santa will need to have an edge UiPath extension for this to work.
AdvancedAdventChallenge 4.zip (833.0 KB)

[monsieurrahul (Rahul)]

Here’s a story of how Santa solved this challenge:

: Rome, what a lovely capital city! Such a historical place!

: Hello Santa, how are you? Enchanté!

: Hello there, my friend! Nice to meet you too!

: What are you upto Santa? I heard that you are doing cool things with your new UiPath robot friend?

: Oh, yes! He is my little helper! I’ll introduce you to him later. I’m here now to show you the places I’m about to visit after the holidays. Would you like to come along?

: Sure! That’d be a great start to 2021.

: Your file is encrypted , please decrypt before using

: Hahaha, about time. Let me call my friend Skywalker to do this for me. His lightsaber should be able to break things in no time.

: Zoop! What? Nothing happened! Can you do this Obi?

: Zoop! Still nothing? We’re sorry Santa, this is hard for us, please call your robot friend to do this.

: Ha ha ha! Alright then folks. Hello robot!

: Hello again, Santa!

: I have these files…

: I’m on it. Let me take a look at the files and decide how to decode them.

: Take your time, just explain to me what you’re doing so I understand.

: Alright, I’m ready! Let’s go

Advent Challenge #4, Beginner :

Workflow Screenshot:

Approach Used:
Initialize variables, decode the text file using the ImageDecoder activity (which is borrowed from one of Santa’s elves), open the image, get the city name through input box, open google, search the city name, read the coordinates, print it to the console.

Bot Run Screenshot:

: Wow, that was quick!

: Of course! Now, file 2. Lets go

Advent Challenge #4, Advanced :

Workflow Screenshot:

Approach Used:
Initialize variables, read the text file, pass it to the invoke code activity, generate image, read the image using OCR, get the country name, go to Google maps, search for the country, perform string manipulations, print the coordinates to the console.

Bot Run Screenshot:

: I’m done, Santa! Here is the workflow file, if you need it: UiPath-Advent-Day4.zip (382.0 KB)

: You keep getting better day by day! Thanks, my friend!

: Anytime, Santa! See you soon!

: I’m out of words… I need a friend like this.

: That’s UiPath’s vision, a robot for every person!

: Oh yeah, I’m definitely getting one to help me at work.

: And that’s my Christmas gift to you!

: Awesome! Thanks, Santa!

: Let me book my tickets now.

: Okay, lets do that

Happy Santa and his friend now book tickets to Honolulu and Iceland

: This was a perfect experience, wasn’t it?

: By the way Santa, which one your elves knows how to code? I almost forgot to ask that to your robot friend. Who gave him that custom package?

: He is the wisest of them all who says ‘Do or do not, there is no try!’

Guess who was behind all this? It’s Yoda!

Thanks for this @Pablito, @Vibhor.Shrivastava, @loginerror, @Steven_McKeering, @AndersJensen and others. Appreciate your efforts!

Cheers,
Rahul

[abu.behlim (Abu Hurera Behlim)]

Beginner

Hey Santa , My name is Ninja Hattori and I’m a Ninja man.

Hey Hattori, could you please help me to decode those images and get me the coordinates of the encrypted locations to reach my destination paths?

I’m here to help you santa . I will decode those images with my Naruto Ninja tool (Library File).

Let me do this first santa then I will find the exact location name

Santa: OMG You’re sooo talented Hattori. I can’t believe this

Hahahahah. Yes I’m

Ok, So I will first decode the file and here is my workflow one

After finding the Location name I will use my power for fetching the coordinates with the help of my OCR Ninja Tool with the help of webpage.

So, here is my second workflow santa .

and I will use the match method for fetching the exact coordinates with the help of regex.

Ohhh hattori I’m very Impressed by your talent

Ohhh Thank you santa for appreciation and now close your eyes.

Ok, Hattori

Dingggg Dingggg Dinggggg
Output is ready.

Santa now you can open your eyes and here is the exact coordinates of your location.

OOOOOOOO MMMMMMMMM GGGGGGGGGG… This is really awesommmmmeee wowwwwww Hattori. You’re ammazing

Thank you Hattori for helping me to get out from this problem…

Now, I can easily reach to my destination.

[emre.balci (Emre Kemal Balcı)]

Dear Santa,

I found coordinates of the places that you ask for.

Greetings from Turkey, I wish you come to visit us someday…

Beginners Challenge

Workflow

Output

AdventChallenge4.Beginner.zip (3.6 MB)

Advanced Challenge

Workflow

Output

AdventChallenge4.Advanced.zip (4.9 MB)

[Markus_Anding]

Yo-da all!!

Yoda found an old cipher machine to help Santa find his way after X-Mas.

Challenge#4 Advanced.Challenge#4.xaml (155.7 KB)

[prashanthig]

Hello Santa! Hope u had a great stay at Copenhagen and Rome .
as you are really tired, let me help you clear the virus on your Pc.
Can u give me your computer?
I will give you wait a sec…
Here you go, Virus is detected and cleared

ok now lets find how to fix your encrypted images and find some location coordinates?

[Used read text file activity and Library file provided @Pablitoz to decode text file and founded image]

What about my coordinates ?? :santa?
[used Screen scraping technique to extract data from image and with the help of browser I have solved your coordinates issue too]

Do u wanna have alook?

take a look at this screenshots…

May be you can keep this coordinates file with you…

and sure we can keep them safe …

Here you go , I will share zip file here.

AdventChallenge4.zip (817.0 KB)

@ Hope you will have a safe trip… Happy Christmas

Happy Automation & Cheers

[tavineei (Tav)]

Dear Santa,
I found the location for you !

<“Beginner challenge”>

4thAdvent Challenge - beginner.zip (1.6 MB)

[prashanthig]

**Advance-Challenge #4 **

** It’s the best time of the year, Filled with holiday cheer **
** so true :deer ! This is the time to have in the house ,
streets filled with snow **
** It is a pleasant month which showers cheers on
anyone’s face **
** Ho, Ho, Ho , Ho! **
** Ok let’s finish our task by finding coordinates **
** Lets rush!!!Ho!!Ho!!Ho!! **
** Find attachments Below **

[ decoded text file using c# and store image file in project folder]

[ Used maps to Scrape Data and by using extracted data find coordinates of it in a browser … output screen shot is a proof]

** Wow Santa we found our coordinates so lets Start our Journey to
extracted place from these coordinates **

** Sure lets Say grab some presents too… Happy Friday **

Advance_AdventChallenge_4.zip (824.8 KB)

Happy Automation & Cheers

[rpavanguard]

Advanced - CSharp with Master Yoda Style Output

Single Sequence Project

Decrypt Image

Extract Place Info w/ OCR

Extract Location Info of Place From Google Maps

UiPath_Advent2020_Advanced_CSharp_rpavanguard_Yoda_Style.xaml (58.3 KB)

[stefano_negro]

I felt a disurbance in Santa’s Force!

It was time for us to help him!

But the coordinates to find the location were unreadable, and R2D2 had only a part of the message to show us

So we gathered all our droids in order to help Santa decode his image

And with a small effort the image was recovered!

But now we’ll have to find the exact location, and the Galaxy is enormous!

This time is C3PO that uses a link he memorized to retrieve the coordinates: maps.google.com

and so the coordinates were retrieved and Santa could go on with his journey!

Finally everyone in the Galaxy is ready for Christmas!

AdvChallenge4.xaml (34.9 KB)

UiPath Advente Challenge 4 - Run

[seanrockvz13 (Sean Jerome Llanto)]

Katniss was very excited to help… Hence, she shouted!

Nacho Fast! Said Nacho Libre! Who said you can help Santa. Not without going through me first

What in the Star Wars Universe are you talking about. Both of you, please move away. We will handle this.

Hence, the story of the Beginner and Advanced Solutions for Santa’s problems

Beginner

That is right, Santa wants to go to Honolulu first

Thanks to the Santa’s friends who shared the image decoder package " You must unlearn what you have learned."

Aftewhich, the bots got the coordinates via latlong.net then finally string manipulation

Advanced

I would like to thank first @StefanSchnell as i leveraged on his VB Code for this.

Upon reading the Image using the VB Code

R2D2 and the team opened identified that Santa would like to go to Iceland

I sense something off Santa…Seems you do not want to go back…

(Note: False Advertisement)

tsk tsk tsk… Santa, we know your style…

But Santa made a great excuse, he said he just wanted to visit his holiday village in Rovaniemi in Lapland

Going back to the topic…

R2D2 and the team opened googlemaps, searched for Iceland,

then used a Do while loop to ensure that the page has fully loaded.

Afterwards, the droids used Get attribute activity to get the URL which contains the coordinates.

With the help of string Manipulation, the droids were able to find the coordinates of Iceland.

Below are the .xaml files for both Beginner and Advanced Solutions

Advent Challenge4.zip (186.3 KB)

Advent Challenge Number 4:

[Maneesha_de_silva]

Ho ho hoo…Mary Christmas

If you wish to watch my Santa Story the

Episode #1 ==> Advent Challenge #1

Episode #2 ==>:Santa: Advent Challenge #2 (Everyone welcome to join the event!) - #36 by Maneesha_de_silva

Episode #3 ==> Advent Challenge #3 - #39 by Maneesha_de_silva

Welcome to my Santa Story Episode #4 (Beginners Challenge Inside)

…Now the game is begin……

I hope you remember on my Episode #1 ==> Advent Challenge #1 at that moment Santa got help to hack the Zeus Weather Control panel

Unfortunately, Zeus got to knew that Santa is the man who did that…
He was angry again… this time too much…

because still, Zeus believes that at least this year he will get a gift from Santa, but the santa is having many troubles during this year he is in late of gift delivery.

But Zeus won’t care about it, He did the worst thing to Santa that no one event didn’t think to do, how bad is the …isn’t he ? for one gift

Zeus sent his magical lightning spell into the earth

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

So sad… this time Santa is in Rome , I don’t need to explain to you that what is the relationship between Zeue and Rome
The magical bonds still live inside Rome with zeuse , it was activated in sudden and moved into the hotel that Santa staying

and the Zeuse’s ghost make virus on Santa’s laptop and the images are now encrypted and completely unreadable

Meanwhile Zeus

Hohoho you remember the Anonimus Hacker the friend of Santa in Episode #1

He came again help to Santa, he has done the decode of all data in Santa’s laptop finally/////

Challange 4 - Main.xaml (17.3 KB)

[Anna_Maziarz (Anna Skrzeszowska - Office Samurai)]

Beginner
Hello Santa !
It is late but i found the place where you would like to spend your holidays after Christmas
This place is Honolulu !

[rpavanguard]

Hello Community,

Following an earlier post yesterday, we made a short video that demonstrates solution by @rpavanguard

UiPath Advent 2020 #4 - Advanced Challenge - Solution Demo

Cheers!

[StefanSchnell]

Beginners Advent Challenge #4

Santa sings the song Bohemian Rhapsody, parallel to Gonzo, while editing the Advent Challenge #4.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landside, no escape from reality
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see
I’m just a poor Santa, I need more RPA
Because I’m easy come, easy go, little high, little low
Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me

Santa sings more, not a real Christmas song. He decided to convert the image from Base64 to the image format as tiny Invoke Code activity.

He interrupts the workflow with an InputDialog and the input of the desired location name. Santa sings now louder.

In the next step Santa loads from simplemaps.com a database, with all locations around the world and their latitude and longitude.

Santa extracts the zip file and reads from the CSV file the geo location.

Santa and his elves sings now:
I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, Scaramouch will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me
Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro, Magnifico

Santa gets the data he wants.

Main.xaml (9.7 KB)

The song is over and Santa feels good, any way the wind blows.

[StefanSchnell]

Advanced Advent Challenge #4

Santa thinks that Star Wars is very popular, but he likes Spaceballs more - especially Dark Helmet.

But before he watch this movie it is necessary to solve this challenge. Santa uses his approach from the beginner section to convert the image from Base64 to an image. So far so well. Santa decides to use Tesseract OCR.

He loads the image and uses the OCR. But the result isn’t very good, so it is necessary to use Regex to detect the correct text.

The OCR is not very fast, Santa dreams of Princess Vespa in the meantime.

He opens the browser with Google Maps and puts the second hit in the search box. Iceland is not unique, but Island is.

To be sure that the target location is full in the browser window Santa adds three times to push the zoom in button.

Last but not least he reads from the browsers address bar the geo location. To realize this Santa uses Regex too.

Santa writes the geo location data to the output window.

Santa asks himself, if Dot Matrix is also equipped with a geo location system.

May the RPA force be with you.

Main.xaml (21.1 KB)