Web Recorder

Record browser activities using Web Automation Recorder

Web Recorder can record user activities on the selected web browser and playback the recorded actions.

Recording

Recording works in two modes

1. Automatic

2. Manual

Visualyze Automation Extension must be installed in the browser for the Recorder to function.

Automatic

Recorder starts creating steps from all the actions by the user in the browser. The steps have all the information to recreate the user activity.

recording the actions using Web Recorder

Manual

In Manual mode user adds a step and sets the element and other required parameters.

Manually adding a step

Actions

There are eight types of actions in Web Recorder. But only Web Action (or simply 'Action') is recorded in automatic mode.

1. Web Action

2. Store Action

3. Scrape Data Action

4. Stop Action

5. If Element Condition Action

6. If Variable Condition Action

7. Wait Condition Action

8. Try.. Catch Action

Web Action

A simple action performed on a webpage.

Store Action

Get the specified value from webpage and stores it in a Variable.

Scrape Data Action

Scrapes tabular data from Webpage and stores in a DataTable Variable.

Stop Action

Stops the playback with a message written to log. There are three levels of log

• Info

• Warn

• Error

An Error log is considered as a playback error. And can stop the execution if no error handling is in place.

Nested Actions

If Element Condition, If Variable Condition, Wait Condition, Try.. Catch actions can have child actions creating nested actions.

nested actions

If Element Condition Action

Checks for a condition in the webpage and executes nested actions if true.

see Conditions for more details

If Variable Condition Action

Checks for a condition with variables and executes nested action if true.

see Conditions for more details

Wait Condition Action

Waits for a condition in the webpage to become true until timeout, then executes the nested actions. The timeout is given in the format hh:mm:ss

see Conditions for more details

Try.. Catch Action

Executes the Actions inside Try, if a playback error happens, jumps out of the try block and executes the actions in catch block.

Elements

Elements pane in Web Recorder

An Element contains all the required data of an element in a webpage. An element contains selectors including xpaths required to find the element in the webpage during playback. These selectors are automatically created during recording. The selectors are user editable and supports variable replacement.

Adding Elements

Elements are added automatically during recording. An element can be added manually by clicking the Add Element From Screen Button in Elements Pane or in the Element selector dropdowns present in all the steps which takes an Element as an input.

Editing Elements

property pane showing currently selected element

Elements can be edited in the property pane.

• Attributes Shows the attributes of the Element.

• Name User defined name of the Element. Name is auto generated from the type of the element.

• Tag The HTML tag of the element.

• Target paths The list of selectors for the element.

Only selectors present in the Target Paths are used for finding the element. Therefore editing other properties has no significance in the Recorder.

Selector Priority

Element selectors are given priority according to its key. Selectors are used for finding elements according to their priority. If a selectors fails to find the element within a timeout (10 s), then the next selector in priority is used. If no selectors are found, the playback fails. Following is the descending order of selector priority.

• custom

• id

• xpath:innerText

• link

• xpath:link

• css

• xpath:href

• xpath:idRelative

• xpath:attributes

• ui

• name

• dom:name

• xpath:img

• dom:index

• xpath:position

• tagName

• xpath:full

All except 'custom' are generated by the Recorder.

Keys are used only for determining the priority and not necessarily the type of selector. For example a 'css' selector can be given higher priority by giving it the key 'id'.

Variables

Variables Pane in Web Recorder

All User Created Variables in studio appears in the variables pane in Web Recorder. And user can create new Variables from inside the recorder using the Add Variable Button. This will open the Create Variable Dialog. Four Types of variables can be created from recorder.

• String

• Int64 or Long

• Boolean

• DataTable

Using Variables in Recorder

different ways of using variables

Variables can be given in the fields where a Variable input is expected. In addition to that variables can be given in fields of a step where a text input is expected.

1. Text given inside two double-quote (") characters are considered as normal string.

2. Text given without two double-quote (") characters around are considered as a Variable.

3. Only Variables can be used in fields where a Variable is expected. This includes Variable field in Store Action, Scrape Data Action and If Variable Condition Action.

4. Variable replacement is possible if user provides the string input inside two backquote (`) characters and places the variable inside curly braces ({}) following a dollar ($) character.

Conditions

A Condition is a statement which always evaluates to either True or False. All Condition Actions evaluate a condition before executing its inner steps (only if the condition is true). There are three types of condition

1. Element

2. Variable

3. Boolean

Element Condition

Checks for a condition is webpage. This can be checking if an Element is in a particular state or have a specific value. All text fields in the condition supports variable replacement. Element conditions are used inside If Element Condition Action and Wait Condition Action.

Variable Condition

Checks for a condition with a Variable value. All text fields in the condition supports variable replacement. Variable conditions are used inside If Variable Condition Action.

Boolean Condition

Boolean condition enables joining multiple conditions but of similar type. This means that a Variable condition cannot be joined with an Element Condition. There are four types of Boolean Condition. They differ in the way they joins the first and second conditions and produces the result.

• Done result of the first condition. (There is no second condition)

• Not Inverts the result of the first condition. (There is no second condition)

• And True if both first and second condition are True, else False.

• Or True if at least one of first and second conditions are True, else False.

Condition Evaluation

There are several rules to consider when creating conditions.

1. The first condition of the Boolean Condition is always an Element Condition or Variable Condition.

2. The second condition of a Boolean Condition is always a Boolean Condition.

3. All Conditional actions holds only one condition which is a Boolean Condition.

4. When a Boolean Condition is evaluated, the first condition is evaluated first. The second condition is evaluated only when

   • Boolean Condition is And and the first condition returned True. (since both conditions should be True)

   • Boolean Condition is Or and the first condition returned False. (since at least one of the conditions should be True)

According to the rules this condition will be evaluated as

(is present OR(is visible AND (has text NOT)))

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Loading and Saving

import, save and Add to workflow

A recording can be saved to the computer using the Save Button. The saved recording has an extension .vrec. A saved recording file can be opened using the Import Button.

A recording can be integrated to the Workflow using the Add to Workflow option. This will create a Web Automation Session Activity in the workflow.