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PAD - selector not found

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Posted on by csundar

I'm trying to make a PAD flow for my ERP (HTML5 based on INFOR platform). I've had some decent success in getting fields to be recognized and used using web automation and focusing on fields before entering data into them. Unfortunately now I've hit a block. I've got a field that is represented in HTML as below where there is a box of the field with a selector enabled within it that lets me bring up a popup to search if I don't know what value to use. The field looks like this and is represented by the code below.

<div class="TriggerInputField LookupField" id="tssoc2110m002-51-tssoc210.cstp-38-lookup" style="width: 63px; position: absolute; left: 118px; top: 197px; overflow: hidden;"><input type="text" class="TextInputField TriggerInputFieldWidget" id="tssoc2110m002-51-tssoc210.cstp-38-lookup-widget" maxlength="3"><div tabindex="-1" class="Button TriggerButton" id="tssoc2110m002-51-tssoc210.cstp-38-lookup-trigger-button"><img class="gwt-Image" src="data&colon;image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAwAAAAMCAYAAABWdVznAAAA8klEQVQoU4WRPUrDQRDFf+tHY6Op5l97AcHaVosQsBNTBQ8gWFrqCWLhAey0tAiBpDAnsM8NwlSxEAIWrrxlF5ZFsdnZefPezJvdALwBhBB2FYEtQPdt4DvG+AXEXDsJwHFOShD2rh4ZKGTlUccC2ACfmXChaGbPwGXGXtx9mJwAh5WVHWDZdd0oxvjk7mmKmWlKEgmYNpb6IhRyqRVMgl5eSl32gNV/gnk1QQ1O/7D06O7XIqTtG1tHZnZbLT0BBsC8PJ34a+CgEn5kuwkysxlwVgvOgdfGXjOYaS1QcQzcAHfAfcsu/1Dj+8ADcPUbWdgPvlxMBRcqeGwAAAAASUVORK5CYII=" id="tssoc2110m002-51-tssoc210.cstp-38-lookup-trigger-button-image"></div></div>

In other examples, I've made my final selector for the UI element as ID contains "tssoc210.cstp-38-lookup-widget" (the field I want to have data populated within. In this case it is not able to select the element, giving me a runtime error of "selector not found"

Any advice?

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Power Automate Desktop

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crelke 75 on at

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@csundar, I have had issues in both WinAutomation and PAD related to selectors (in my case it had trouble recognizing an iframe). I worked around this by using the "Wait for Image" action and then recording the screen location, then having the mouse click and send keys, etc. I know this didn't answer your question but it's a potential workaround that has worked for me in the past. This approach is especially helpful when you have HTML/selectors that have new unique ids every time the web page loads...

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csundar 87 on at

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@crelke I ended up recording the step again using PAD the steps again and it generated the UI element differently (code below). This ended up referencing the element correctly and is now working. Thanks for the help
html > body > div:eq(2) > div:eq(1) > div > div:eq(3) > iframe > html > body > div:eq(2) > div:eq(1) > div > div:eq(1) > div:eq(3) > div:eq(0) > div > div:eq(1) > div > div:eq(1) > div:eq(0) > div > div > div:eq(1) > div:eq(1) > div > div:eq(15) > input

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JosiasDeleu 24 on at

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Hi @csundar
Although this solution may be currently working, it has a flaw which is that you are using the "Ordinal" attribute repeatedly ("eq(3)" "eq(15)" etc). This is not a reliable selector, since it depends on the position of that element in the HTML doc.
Similarly, to use images in the automation should be the last thing we do, because of its fallibility.

There is an important enhancement to be done on this feature in PAD, to get the same functionality that other RPA tools already offer. I hope they are planning some fix soon for this!

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