studio
2020.10
false
OUT OF SUPPORT
Studio User Guide
Last updated Dec 20, 2023

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



The Selector Editor window enables you to see the automatically-generated selector and edit it and its attributes. To access this window, in the Workflow Designer panel, click the Options button in the body of an activity and select Edit Selector.



This can also be done by using 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:

  • docs image Selector is being validated
  • docs image Valid selector
  • docs image Invalid selector
  • docs image 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

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

isleaf

parentclass

parentname

title

src

href

tableCol

tableRow

colName

rowName

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.

  • Supported Tags and Attributes
  • WND
  • HTML
  • WEBCTRL
  • CTRL
  • UIA
  • JAVA
  • SAP
  • SILVERLIGHT

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