Improve object identification

This topic describes the features that enable you to improve object identification.

In this topic:

Uniquely identify objects by location

To run a step on an object, the object must be identified uniquely. When multiple objects match your object description, you can information to make it unique.

Add one of the following:

• A Position describes the object's ordinal location, and the direction in which to count. For example, Top 3.

• A Relation let's you describe your object by its proximity to another object in the application.

Adding a relation may help create more stable tests that can withstand predictable changes to the application's user interface. Select related objects that are expected to maintain the same relative location to your object over time, even if the user interface design changes.

For example, you might want to add a step that removes an item from shopping cart that contains several items. Each item has its own Remove button.

You can describe the button to click as the Remove button that has the '<item name>' related object to its left.

For details on adding positions and relations, see Manually edit steps.

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Identify objects by their text

You can use an object's name, or label, in its description to identify the object uniquely. This is the object's Identification text.

For example: Click the 'Buy Now' button. Using the Buy Now text in this step to describe the object, ensures that the correct button in clicked.

Sometimes, multiple text strings are identified near the object, and you can specify which one to use for object identification.

You can type the step in the editor or compose it in the step editing pane. The sections below explain the various options available when describing an object by its text.

Use rules and regular expressions

In some cases, you want to identify an object or text whose value varies, such as price, count, or ID. In this case, instead of specifying the exact value of the text, you can specify a rule or regular expression the text should match.

You can select one of the following rules: 

• contains

• does not contain

• begins with

• ends with

• Regular expression. Use this option if you need a more complex rule. Specify a regular expression pattern, using the Python regular expression syntax. Regular expressions are a powerful way of searching for and identifying sequences of characters by using specific patterns that the text being considered should match.

For syntax details and examples, see Identify an object by text.

To use a rule for the identification text:

1. In the step editing pane, click the Settings button near the object's identification text and select Use rule.

2. Select the type of rule from the list. The type can be: Contains, Does not contain, Begins with, Ends with, or Regular expression.

3. Enter the value for the rule or regular expression. To use a parameter, see Pass a value to the script.

To stop using a rule, click the x in the Use rule box.

Exact text matching versus AI matching

By default, AI algorithms are used for text matching. These may consider spelling variations and words with similar meaning to be matches.

If necessary, you can specify that the object's identification text must be matched exactly in order to identify the object.

In the step editing pane, click the Settings button near the object's identification text and select Exact match. To remove the Exact match setting, click its x.

Turn off Identification text

By default, objects are described using their Identification text.

To describe an object whose text varies in the application, you might want to use the object's type and position or relation, ignoring its text.

To do this, omit the text for identification from the step you type in the script, or turn off the Identification text toggle in the step editing pane.

This button is available when editing steps, when adding steps from inspection, and when describing a related object.

For more details, see Step syntax and Manually edit steps.

Text recognition in multiple languages

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is used to recognize text in different languages in an application.

English is the default OCR language. However, you can add additional OCR languages to recognize text in other languages. For details, see Customize settings.

You can add the following OCR languages:

Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Welsh.

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Automatic scrolling

When a script runs, if an AI object is not displayed in the visible part of the web page, the script auto-scrolls further in search of the object. After the object is identified, no further scrolling is performed. This prevents failures during a run session.

By default, the script scrolls down twice. You can customize the direction of the scroll and the maximum number of scrolls to perform, or deactivate scrolling if necessary. For details, see Customize settings.

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See also:

• Customize settings