Web Recorder
Record browser activities using Web Automation Recorder
Last updated
Visualyze Documentation
Record browser activities using Web Automation Recorder
Last updated
Web Recorder can record user activities on the selected web browser and playback the recorded actions.
Recording works in two modes
Automatic
Manual
Visualyze Automation Extension must be installed in the browser for the Recorder to function.
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.
In Manual mode user adds a step and sets the element and other required parameters.
There are eight types of actions in Web Recorder. But only Web Action (or simply 'Action') is recorded in automatic mode.
Web Action
Store Action
Scrape Data Action
Stop Action
If Element Condition Action
If Variable Condition Action
Wait Condition Action
Try.. Catch Action
A simple action performed on a webpage.
Get the specified value from webpage and stores it in a Variable.
Scrapes tabular data from Webpage and stores in a DataTable Variable.
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.
If Element Condition, If Variable Condition, Wait Condition, Try.. Catch actions can have child actions creating nested actions.
Checks for a condition in the webpage and executes nested actions if true.
see Conditions for more details
Checks for a condition with variables and executes nested action if true.
see Conditions for more details
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
Executes the Actions inside Try, if a playback error happens, jumps out of the try block and executes the actions in catch block.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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
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.
Text given inside two double-quote (") characters are considered as normal string.
Text given without two double-quote (") characters around are considered as a Variable.
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.
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.
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
Element
Variable
Boolean
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.
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 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.
There are several rules to consider when creating conditions.
The first condition of the Boolean Condition is always an Element Condition or Variable Condition.
The second condition of a Boolean Condition is always a Boolean Condition.
All Conditional actions holds only one condition which is a Boolean Condition.
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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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.
