Download Multiple Files from a Web Application

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Posted on by santoGD

Hi All,

I am new to Power Automate Desktop. I want to download files from a web application and save it.

Can i use XPath expressions for that?

If the web app's UI change at any point of time(considering the element still be there), i dont want to fail my flow as the element position got changed in the page.

Any advice on this requirement.

Thanks in Advance

Santo

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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The element selectors in PAD are based on CSS. If you want to use XPath, you can do that via the Run JavaScript function on web page action, if you can write a JS script.

If you capture a proper selector, the position of the element may not really matter very much. But it really depends on each specific UI. See this tutorial to learn more about editing selectors: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/build-custom-selectors

Also this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PcyBa22Jj8&ab_channel=Thomas%22Shaky%22Petersen

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santoGD 58 on at

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Thanks @Agnius for the detailed info.
Is it custom selector or writing javascript is better and stable?

I have seen that with custom selectors, the element is able to find out even though the position is different.

So anything else other than custom selectors , do i need to take care when selecting an element or writing some text in web application?

Thanks in Advance
Santo

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cwischnewski 142 on at

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I think you will be fine sticking to standard selectors. Start with trying to capture them using the GUI tools in PAD. Then look at the selector they identified and you will find the CSS Selector is very similar to XPath.

We started our RPA journey on another tool that used XPath, I found it pretty easy to transition to CSS selectors. This cheat sheet (https://devhints.io/xpath) I found helps with showing common things in both XPath and CSS Selector to help make that transition. Another helpful thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned is that the PAD selectors are actually hybrid of CSS and JQuery selectors (https://api.jquery.com/category/selectors/) here is another helpful guide on some JQuery selector concepts that you can use to get some missing XPath functionality. I think you will find almost everything you have done in XPath can be done with a combination of the CSS Selectors and the JQuery selector functions.

I have been known to create one UI element and just replace the string with a variable and then use a Set variable to assign my own selector string on the step before I need to use it.

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santoGD 58 on at

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Hi @cwischnewski

Thanks very much for the assistance.

When I read through documents, XPATH can be added only for XML document processing.
I have the scenario of downloading documents from web application with some input parameters (Iterate through some path and then input search parameter )for search.

In this scenario, how I need to proceed?
1)Is it with UI elements with custom selectors and data extraction from web ?
2)javascript/jquery(which I don t know where to write)

OR any other approach?

Thanks in advance
Santo

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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It really depends on your own preferences. If you are proficient in JS, feel free to use that. But the standard UI element functionalities should generally work for you. I usually revert to JS when standard UI elements do not work properly, but cases like that are actually quite rare, and apply to some specific web pages.

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