topic RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards in Product Forum

Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

miba-lego — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 11:46:00 GMT

Hi all,

I am currently building an integration where the usage of Dynamic Attributes with wildcards would be a huge help.

Is there any way to achieve this?

For example:

The Window Text of a specific window can be:

"Create - Customer", "Create - Product", "Modify - Customer", "Modify - Product" and so on.

If I could provide "Create*" or "Modify*", through the Dynamic input, that would solve the issue - But I cant seem to find a way to trigger the wildcard search, through the dynamic input.

I do have other solutions in mind, but this would be the easiest and cleanest, if possible.

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Michael Berg Andreasen
RPA Developer
SE
Europe/Denmark
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

rajeshkumarmuthineni — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 15:19:00 GMT

Hi Michael
Select Attribute Match Type to Dynamic and In parameters we can choose wildcard. Get the value into Data item using Calc stage and then use the value with Match Type Wildcard.

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Rajesh kumar Muthineni
RPA Developer
Highmark Health
America/Chicago
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

rajeshkumarmuthineni — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 16:25:00 GMT

In case if you need this expression

""""&[Data1]&[Data2]&""""

Data1: Create -
Data2: *

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Rajesh kumar Muthineni
RPA Developer
Highmark Health
America/Chicago
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

miba-lego — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 08:26:00 GMT

Hi Rajesh,

I was also certain, that I had seen that functionality before - thank you for highlighting it for me!

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Michael Berg Andreasen
RPA Developer
SE
Europe/Copenhagen
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

rajeshkumarmuthineni — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 15:47:00 GMT

I might have understood your question in other way. Just sharing for other members this is from Attribute Match Doc

* - Matches against a wildcard expression in which * represents any characters

? - Matches against a wildcard expression in which ? matches any single character

# - Matches against a wildcard expression in which # matches any single number

If you find better ways of doing it please share here.

Thank you 🙂

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Rajesh kumar Muthineni
RPA Developer
Highmark Health
America/Chicago
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

MarcFuse — Thu, 07 May 2020 14:18:00 GMT

Hi,
I have similar problem: my integration is using PuTTY to connect to various devices and I want to make sure I'am writing text to the appropriate window. PuTTY uses the Windows Text like: "IP_address - PuTTY" in its terminal window.
It would be nice to get IP_address from a Data item (which I already use to connect) and add " - PuTTY" to it, to check if the terminal window text is accurate.
Something like this: [IPaddress]&" - PuTTY" but what is the correct syntax?

RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

ErjolaMema — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 14:43:00 GMT

Hi Rajesh,

I have make the element in application dynamic ,because a DIV in the path changes +1.

But another DIV keep changing there too,and it is not a regular change so I can't get a regular expression to it.

That is the reason that I have put a (*) in it.

I did the " Match type " wildcard but after some runnings it stop and sometimes also the blueprism closed it self.

What is the best way to fix it,in that way it will work fine ?

For this element I first use a wait stage ,to check if it exists or not ,and then I read the value in it with a read stage , when I put the parameters that are in the attached photo. For the second element I do the same thing , i check if it exist or not ,read its value and keep doing this thing until there is no more row to read.

I would really appreciate if someone could help me with the right way,

Thank you in advance,

Erjola

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Erjola Mema
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

AmiBarrett — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 15:49:00 GMT

The syntax you've provided looks like it would be correct. When in doubt, try spying out the window in Win32 mode (you don't have to save it) and see what format shows up in the application modeler for the Window Title filter.

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Ami Barrett
Solution Architect
Karsun Solutions
Plano TX
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

ErjolaMema — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 07:34:00 GMT

Hi @AmiBarrett,

What do you suggest me ?

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Erjola Mema
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

devneetmohanty07 — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 09:57:00 GMT

Hi @ErjolaMema,

I don't think the problem here is with how you have made the attribute dynamic rather the problem might lie with the fact that you are taking in the full web path which always can be susceptible to change. As a best practice, I never go with full webpaths but instead I prefer XPaths which can make your life much easier and also make the selector attributes more robust in nature.

I could help you to build an XPath which you can use here in place of the Web Path that you are using but for that I would need to have a look at the HTML code of the element that you are spying. An easy way to do is that on your web browser (Chrome/Firefox or Edge), navigate to the web page and right click on the same and select the 'Inspect' option as shown below:

Click on the 'Inspect' icon and select the element that you want to get the attribute for:

And you should see the HTML code in the code window below the 'Inspect' icon for the highlighted element:

Based on this HTML structure, I can easily form an 'XPath' expression which would be much more reliable. You can read in detail about a similar topic, I answered in past here at the forum on benefits and usage of XPaths over traditional web paths: Question on Xpath

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Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
WonderBotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

ErjolaMema — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 15:49:00 GMT

Hi @devneetmohanty07,

Thank you for the reply .

I am attaching you the rows which I should catch(There may be one 1 row ,3,9 rows etc . )

I should go in each row and catch its value (for example row 1 has the value 4701019030).
Below I am attaching you the screenshots of "Inspect elements" for some rows.

I will be waiting for your response.

Best regards,

Erjola

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Erjola Mema
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

AmiBarrett — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 16:42:00 GMT

Honestly, @devneetmohanty07 had a great suggestion with using XPath. In theory, it should be both quick and robust.

Before that was a truly viable option in the platform, I had previously written some other automations that would loop upward through a range of div indices until it found a matching container, then used that as an offset going forward.

For example.
Path (dynamic): HTML(1)/BODY(1)/DIV(3)/DIV(2)/DIV([count])/TABLE(1)

Logic:

Use a wait stage with a 0.1s timeout to run a Check Exists against the dynamic element
1. Timeout
  1. [count] = [count]+1
  2. Return to wait stage to retry
2. Element found
  1. Proceed with process

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Ami Barrett
Solution Architect
Karsun Solutions
Plano TX
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

devneetmohanty07 — Sat, 15 Oct 2022 00:31:00 GMT

Hi @ErjolaMema,

If you can also show the table tag above, it that would be helpful. From what you showed me, seems like you have a table, and you want to catch the values within each of the td tag corresponding to the cells of different rows but for the same column.

Problem Statement:

In my example, let's say I have a requirement where I need to extract only the cell value for each of the cells in the first column which is called as 'Name' as shown below:

In your case you too have a similar requirement where you want to extract the values for each cell with the column header as 'Conto'

Solution Explanation:

If, you see the HTML structure, on a very high level, we have a table tag with an id attribute called as 'example' which consists of a thead and a tbody section as shown below:

Now if I see thead section, it has all my header cells denoted within separate th tag here:

And similarly, my tbody tag will have different rows denoted by tr tag within which each cell will be denoted by td tag:

So the XPath Expression that I am going to build for this use case would be something like this:

//table[@id='example']//tbody/tr[1]/td[1]

What it means essentially in layman's term is go the table tag with the id attribute as 'example' first. Once you find it, go inside the table for the tbody tag and within that aim for row number 1 which denoted by tr[1] and column number 1 which is denoted by td[1]

This XPath would always aim to 1st row and 1 column value as shown below:

Now if let say I want to make it a bit more robust such as I give the name of the column and it automatically provides the value irrespective of the position of the column, my tweaked XPath expression would become: //table[@id='example']//tbody/tr[1]/td[count(//table/thead/tr/th[.="Name"]/preceding-sibling::th)+1]

Here instead of td[1] I wrote td[count(//table/thead/tr/th[.="Name"]/preceding-sibling::th)+1] which means find one position ahead of the position of the td tag which corresponds to the column defined just before the column having the header title as 'Name' within the thead section of the table.

What this does is it makes your XPath expression dynamic, and it won't rely on column position. Now to finally complete our XPath query we would make the expression dynamic in such a way that we can keep looping a counter variable within it for the tr tag as we are right now pointing the expression to first row using tr[1].

So, we make the attribute dynamic in nature and we use the following expression in a read stage:

The final expression becomes:

"//table[@id='example']//tbody/tr["& [row counter] &"]/td[count(//table/thead/tr/th[.=""Name""]/preceding-sibling::th)+1]"

Final Solution:

So you can use the following modified final expression which I have simplified even further than what I used for my explanation. The only condition is that your table must have a th tag with the name as 'Conto' and a data item called row counter which start from 1 and keeps incrementing till it encounters an error to exit:

"//table[@id='example']//tr["& [row counter] &"]/td[count(//table//th[.=""Conto""]/preceding-sibling::th)+1]"

Also, the best thing about this is if you are able to provide an attribute to the table tag which is 'id' in my case then you probably don't even need to worry about the DIV tags behind it as it will straightaway search from table table ignoring the DIV tag values which you were facing initially.

NOTE: Remember to change the table id tag here from example to what you have. If you don't have id attribute look for a unique attribute and replace both id attribute with that and its value as well

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Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
WonderBotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

ErjolaMema — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 08:16:00 GMT

Hi Devneet ,

Thank you very much for the reply.
Attached is the table :

So, What do I have to put in the 'Id' ?
Is there a change that I should do ?

Thank you again ,

Erjola

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Erjola Mema
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

ErjolaMema — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 08:36:00 GMT

Hi Devneet ,

The other thing is that I have it only Web Path ,not also the X Path .

Is it a problem?

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Erjola Mema
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

ErjolaMema — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 08:38:00 GMT

Hi @AmiBarrett,

I don't have the Xpath in it .

Is there any other way for a solution ?

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Erjola Mema
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

devneetmohanty07 — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:17:00 GMT

Hi Erjola,

You have to provide the XPath expression in that Web Path attribute only. It accepts both XPaths and full path expressions.

Also, can you show me the HTML for the <table> tag by using inspect element as you did before for <td> tag.

It is impossible to say what the ID would be as you have only shown the screenshot of the table not the HTML code behind it.

------------------------------
----------------------------------
Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
WonderBotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

Neel1 — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:28:00 GMT

Hello @ErjolaMema - Here is the answer for your issue on why you can not see the Xpath option.

Source of below snapshot -
https://blue-prism.docebosaas.com/learn/course/16924/play/37103/Spying%2BUsing%2BCSS%2BSelector%2Band%2BXPath%2B%25E2%2580%2593%2BBasics

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Neeraj Kumar
Technical Architect
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RE: Dynamic Attribute, with Wildcards

AmiBarrett — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:25:00 GMT

If you don't have XPath, the logic in my previous post should get you there.

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Ami Barrett
Solution Architect
Karsun Solutions
Plano TX
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