Where are the Nav Tags for selectors documented?

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1

The documentation About Selectors does not include any references to the Nav Tags (e.g. <nav up=‘3’ />).

Where can I find the documentation? If there is none, can you explain and show the available syntax for the entire assortment of Nav tags?

2

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3

I’m also looking for the official documentation as there are a lot of cases where anchors doesn’t work as expected for me but could not find it,

I’ve found the following file
UiPath_Automation_Best_Practice_Guide.pdf (9.6 MB) which includes a brief explanation on page 27.

(original link to the file here)

Still those tags are also not working as expected in 2023.10.0.

I have

<div id='a'>
   <span id='b'>
   <span id='c'>
      <span id='d'>some text</span>

and the selector

<webctrl tag='DIV'/>
<webctrl tag='SPAN'/>
<webctrl tag='SPAN' innertext='*some text*' />
<nav up='2'/>
<webctrl idx='1'/>

is returning the the span ‘b’ instead of the div.

I’m pretty sure I’ve the hierarchy right because the following js works as expected in returning the div

[...document.querySelectorAll("div span span")].filter( x=>x.innerText=='some text')[0].parentElement.parentElement
1 Like
4

That’s an excellent document. Thank you for posting it.

5

I think the idx=‘1’ is the issue. If you want the DIV it seems like all you want is “up 2” not the first child of “up 2.”

6

That’s what i thought, but when I’ve tried it i get “Invalid indexes order in Subselector”

image

Through trial and error i’ve noticed including an element tag after nav works, but it does get the first children of the parent.

I guess ending the selector at the tag is still correct but something else is wrong, likely a bug.

A search for “Invalid indexes order in Subselector” doesn’t return me anything (google or the forums)

7

I can’t get the nav to do anything. The doc appears a bit old, I wonder if it has been deprecated. When I add the nav property it won’t validate and I can’t even click Confirm.

8

Yes reasonable as with <webctrl idx='1' /> a step down is defined

Similar to:

[0].parentElement.parentElement

find Element / check app state check element output: myUiElement
with a selector of:

<webctrl tag='DIV'/>
<webctrl tag='SPAN'/>
<webctrl tag='SPAN' innertext='*some text*' />

myDiv = myUiElement.Parent.Parent

9

Here it works as long <nav> is not the last tag (which means you have to do extra steps, which is definitely confusing).

Instead of

<webctrl tag='DIV'/>
<webctrl tag='SPAN'/>
<webctrl tag='SPAN' innertext='*some text*' />
<nav up='2'/>

I would need to do something like

<webctrl tag='DIV'/>
<webctrl tag='SPAN'/>
<webctrl tag='SPAN' innertext='*some text*' />
<nav up='3'/>
<webctrl id='a'/>

(I’ve added id’s to the example just to make it easier to talk about the elements. Imagine i would have to add another more complex criteria to the last <webctrl>)

That works but is way less elegant, understandable and mantainable. It would be way better to use only a selector with all it’s the benefits (ObjRepository, etc).

Additionally we don’t really have much control over the Anchors and the internal steps so i’ve found many cases where the anchor simply won’t work.

Here’s the real life scenario:

Setting the target and anchor. Notice how the target have a non-dynamic aaname selector.,

image
image861×187 17.8 KB

But after making the target’s aaname dynamic…

image
image857×218 26.3 KB

As far as i know we currently have no way of explicity telling studio the element tree relationship’s without the <nav> tag.

10

we would recommend that you will open a new topic, when further support is needed.

yes, but it showcase that your selector construct and the

are different things

When opening your own topic, then please share also with us the more parent surroundings from

with us. Thanks

11

It’s still on topic with the original, unaswered post that other people might stumble upon just as i did.

I know, i was just experimenting on how the <nav> works since studio doesn’t let me end a selector with it and there’s no mention on that on any (current) official documentation.

I edited my last post with screenshots on the problem of using anchors.

Here’s the relavant HTML

<div data-uipath_custom_id_23_10_69_1489="9">
    <span data-uipath_custom_id_23_10_69_1489="17">
        <span data-uipath_custom_id_23_10_69_1489="2">Nota Cancelada</span>
    </span>
    <span data-uipath_custom_id_23_10_69_1489="4">
        <span data-uipath_custom_id_23_10_69_1489="5">Data Cancelamento:</span>
    </span>
    <span data-uipath_custom_id_23_10_69_1489="3">
        <span data-uipath_custom_id_23_10_69_1489="140">25/10/2023 17:18:00</span>
    </span>
</div>