How to use variables in selectors in Studio (dynamic selectors) without string manipulation!

[loginerror (Maciej Kuźmicz)]

This tutorial will teach you how to easily use variables in your selectors. In other words, we will be making dynamic selectors without the use of the old method of concatenating strings. How cool is that!

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will make 1 click in the Notepad app.

Feel free to also reference our documentation here.

Let’s begin!

1. First, we will indicate the element we want to click on. In this case, it will be File menu in Notepad:

This results in the following selector:

2. Now, let’s select the attribute value we want to change:

3. Let’s right click that attribute value for a bunch of options. In our case, we will select “Create Variable”:

4. From here, let’s give our variable a name and a default value:

And confirm it with Enter.
We will now have the new variable added instead of the previous property value:

When we Validate our selector, it should turn green:

There we go!

5. Let’s click OK to save our changes…

Here you can see the final workflow:

And this is how to make your selector dynamic

Note 1 The variables/arguments need to be of type String or Int32. GenericValue type is not supported for the selector variables.
Note 2 The selector variable will take a default value if no other value is set in the workflow. As a result, it will throw an error if the value was not set and the default value is not set. Additionally, the Selector will use the Default value for validation at Design Time, but it will use the current value of the variable at Runtime.

If you want to give it a try, please check out this sample project here:
VariablesInSelectors.zip (13.7 KB)

[2aozturk (Aylin Ahmed)]

Nice

[lakshman (Ganta lakshman)]

@loginerror

Super. We can create dynamic selectors easily and no need to worry about syntax and all. It will be very helpful to the new users. Many people are facing issues with creating dynamic selectors and now this will be very helpful to them.

@loginerror

Is it new feature ? Will it work in all uipath Studio versions ?

[loginerror (Maciej Kuźmicz)]

I thinks it is in Studio for quite some time already, since 2019.4 if I’m not wrong.

[efleurent]

neat! thanks for reminding me of this, had forgotten it was added!

[Palaniyappan (Palaniyappan P)]

I was expecting this for a long time
you are awesome @loginerror

[Corneliu_Niculite]

Variables are available since 19.4. Arguments have been added in 19.8.

[Faraz_Subhani (Faraz)]

Thanks, it really looked good but for me it’s simply taking the variable name inside braces and not the actual value which the variable has.
Sure, I might be doing something wrong

[loginerror (Maciej Kuźmicz)]

Please make sure the scope of the variable is correct (= the activity can ‘see’ the variable). Otherwise, a small project that reproduces the issue would be appreciated

[jcarr79 (John Carr)]

I am only seeing choose/create variable in the context menu, but in my case I am trying choose an argument, which I see as an option in your screenshot. Any settings that I need to change?

Edit: Just to be clear, I do understand that I can assign the value of the argument to a variable and accomplish the same thing, just trying to do it in the cleanest way possible.

[rmunro (Rene Munro)]

Great post, I usually use string manipulation and I think this way takes less steps and it’s easier to read. Thank you!

[loginerror (Maciej Kuźmicz)]

Hi @jcarr79

Argument support was added in 2019.8, I think. What is your Studio version?

[jcarr79 (John Carr)]

Thanks @loginerror - that’s definitely why

[Lahiru.Fernando]

This is awesome. Though it’s being available for quite a long time, today only I knew that this can be done. It’s really helpful in getting dynamic selectors done.

Thank you so much for sharing this tutorial… you are awesome

[ClaytonM]

Hi.

I have not used this yet, but I have a question, and a very important one
I also am not sure if this has maybe been answered before.

Can you use .net to manipulate the value as you use the variable?
For example, let’s say menuOption is of type Date, can you use {{menuOption.ToString("MM-dd-yy")}}

This is pretty important, atleast in my opinion. You can’t expect us to have multiple variables for the same value of slight manipulations, everytime we want to use it in a selector.

[loginerror (Maciej Kuźmicz)]

Hi @ClaytonM

I believe your go to for now would be to re-assign the string manipulation to the same variable just before using it in the selector.

It’s a valuable feedback though, I tracked it and it will be considered

[balramrv (balaraman ramiya)]

Interesting and I missed this update.

[KarthikByggari]

Such a great feature.

[Martha_Simons]

Very Interesting

[sai_chirumamilla]

Hi @ loginerror

How can we use idx value dynamically using same method?

can you suggest any method for me use?

when i was scrape the data every time idx was changing? can i give dynamic idx or not?