- Release Notes
- Getting Started
- Setup and Configuration
- Automation Projects
- Dependencies
- Types of Workflows
- File Comparison
- Automation Best Practices
- Source Control Integration
- Debugging
- The Diagnostic Tool
- Variables
- Arguments
- Imported Namespaces
- Trigger-based Attended Automation
- Recording
- UI Elements
- Control Flow
- Selectors
- Object Repository
- Data Scraping
- Image and Text Automation
- Automating Citrix Technologies
- RDP Automation
- Salesforce Automation
- SAP Automation
- VMware Horizon Automation
- Logging
- The ScreenScrapeJavaSupport Tool
- The WebDriver Protocol
- Test Suite - Studio
- Extensions
- Troubleshooting
- About troubleshooting
- Microsoft App-V support and limitations
- Internet Explorer X64 troubleshooting
- Microsoft Office issues
- Identifying UI elements in PDF with Accessibility options
- Repairing Active Accessibility support
- Automating Applications Running Under a Different Windows User
- Validation of large Windows-legacy projects takes longer than expected
RegEx Search
A regular expression, or RegEx, is a special text string for describing a search pattern. This makes them ideally suited for searching, text processing, and data validation. Using the RegEx search capabilities in selectors enables you to identify multiple target element with a single search execution. Without RegEx, multiple selectors would have been built to identify each target element.
To use the RegEx search capabilities, a matching option needs to be included in the tag of the element you want to identify, as follows:
|
Option |
Description |
|---|---|
|
|
Allows you to specify the target search tag, determined by the
<tag_name> value.
|
|
|
Allows you to specify the search pattern through the
<regex_command> expression used to
identify the <tag_name>.
|
|
Selector type |
Support |
|---|---|
<wnd> | |
<html> | |
<webctrl> | |
<java> | |
<ctrl> | |
<uia> | |
<sap> | |
Tags which identify a process name. Example:
<html app="firefox.exe">.
|
<name> tag alters between 0 and 2. Without the
RegEx search, two selectors would have been built, one for each value of the
<name> tag, as follows:
Selector for <name='Display is 0'> tag
<wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' /> <uia cls='LandmarkTarget' /> <uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is 0' role='text' /><wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' /> <uia cls='LandmarkTarget' /> <uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is 0' role='text' />Selector for the <name='Display is 2'> tag
<wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' /> <uia cls='LandmarkTarget' /> <uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is 2' role='text' /><wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' /> <uia cls='LandmarkTarget' /> <uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is 2' role='text' /><uia> tag makes it possible to
generate a single selector to match both cases. A valid selector, in this case,
looks something like
this:
<wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' />
<uia cls='LandmarkTarget' />
<uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is \d' role='text' matching:name='regex' /><wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' />
<uia cls='LandmarkTarget' />
<uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is \d' role='text' matching:name='regex' />matching:name='regex' attribute instructs our selector to use
RegEx to identify the <name> tag, while the
<name='Display is \d'> command returns all the numerical
values for the <name> tag it identifies.
Below are a couple of more examples on how RegEx search works and what values it returns:
|
Regular expression |
Description |
Returned results |
|---|---|---|
|
|
Matches every string containing the RPA or Robotic Process Automation strings. |
|
|
|
Matches every string starting with the
Index value, followed by any number between
0 and 5.
|
|
