About Selectors

To automate specific actions in the user interface, you are required to interact with various windows, buttons, drop-down lists and many others. One of the ways in which UI elements can be identified is by using their position on the screen, but this can be unreliable.

To overcome this problem, Studio uses what we call selectors. These store the attributes of a graphical user interface element and its parents, in the shape of an XML fragment.

Most of the times, selectors are automatically generated by Studio and do not require further input from you, especially if the apps you are trying to automate have a static user interface.

However, some software programs have changing layouts and attribute nodes with volatile values, such as some web-apps. Studio cannot predict these changes and, therefore, you might have to manually generate some selectors.

A selector has the following structure:

<node_1/><node_2/>...<node_N/>

The last node represents the GUI element that interests you, and all the previous ones represent the parents of that element. <node_1> is usually referred to as a root node, and represents the top window of the app.

Each node has one or more attributes that help you correctly identify a specific level of the selected application.

Each node has the following format: 

<ui_system attr_name_1='attr_value_1' ... attr_name_N='attr_value_N'/>

Every attribute has an assigned value. It is important to pick attributes with a constant value. If the value of an attribute changes each time the app is started, then the selector will not be able to correctly identify the element.

Selectors are displayed in the Properties panel of activities, under Input > Target > Selector. All activities related to graphical elements have this property.

The Selection Options window enables you to select and edit a target. To access this window, in the Workflow Designer panel, click the Options button in the body of an activity and select Indicate target on screen or Edit target.

The Selector Editor window enables you to see the automatically-generated selector and edit it and its attributes. To access this window, use the Ellipsis button next to the Selector field, in the Properties panel.

Option	Description
Validate	The button shows the status of the selector by checking the validity of the selector definition and the visibility of the target element on the screen. The Validate button has three states: Selector is being validated Valid selector Invalid selector Modified selector, revalidate The button is correlated with UI Explorer validation states.
Indicate Element	Indicate a new UI element to replace the previous one.
Repair	Enables you to re-indicate the same target UI element and repair the selector. This operation does not completely replace the previous selector. The button is available only when the selector is invalid.
Highlight	Brings the target element in the foreground. The highlight stays on until the option is disabled with a click. The button is enabled only if the selector is valid.
Edit Attributes	Contains all the application components needed to identify the target application (a window, a button etc.). This section is editable.
Edit Selector	Holds the actual selector. This section is editable.
Open in UI Explorer	Launches the UI Explorer. The option is enabled only for valid selectors.

Note: In some situations, when Studio and the targeted application are opened with different elevated privileges, the selector might not work. We recommend to always open both applications with the same privileges.

Supported Tags and Attributes

The following tables present the compatibility between tags and attributes used to build selectors and the selector capability:

Note: Selectors generated for Java applications which contain multiple WND tags cannot be used with events monitoring.

WND

Attribute	Fuzzy	RegEx	Case-Sensitive
app
cls
title
aaname
ctrlname (WinForms)
ctrlid (WinForms)
idx
tid
pid
isremoteapp
aastate
sapClient (SAP)
sapLanguage (SAP)
sapProgram (SAP)
sapScreen (SAP)
sapSession (SAP)
sapSysName (SAP)
sapSysNumber (SAP)
sapSysSessionId (SAP)
sapTransaction (SAP)
sapUser (SAP)

HTML

Attribute	Fuzzy	RegEx	Case-Sensitive
url
htmlwindowname
title
class
app
idx
pid
tid
excludehwnd
bsid (Browser Session ID)
isremoteapp

WEBCTRL

The tag and idx attributes use string values. All other WEBCTRL attributes have dynamic values.

Attribute	Fuzzy	RegEx	Case-Sensitive
tag
idx
aaname
name
id
parentid
class
css-selector
innertext
visibleinnertext
isleaf
parentclass
parentname
src
href
tableCol
tableRow
colName
rowName
aria-label
aria-labelledby

CTRL

Attribute	Fuzzy	RegEx	Case-Sensitive
role
name
automationid
labeledby
aastate
virtualname
text
rowName
idx

UIA

Attribute	Fuzzy	RegEx	Case-Sensitive
accelkey (Accelerator Key)
acskey (Access Key)
automationid
cls
helpText
legacyAccHelp (Legacy Accessible Help)
enabled
kbfocus (Is Keyboard Focusable)
ispwd (Is Password)
itemstatus
itemtype
rtid (Runtime ID)
role
name
pid
tableRow
tableCol
rowName
colName
idx

JAVA

Attribute	Fuzzy	RegEx	Case-Sensitive
role
name
virtualname
javastate
tableRow
tableCol
rowName
colName
idx

SAP

Attribute	Fuzzy	RegEx	Case-Sensitive
id
leafid This attribute is not exposed in the Attribute panel because it is mutual-exclusive with the id attribute. It can be added manually.
tableRow
tableCol
colName
relpath
itemId

SILVERLIGHT

Please note that the Silverlight tag does not support Fuzzy, RegEx, and Case-Sensitive capabilities.