Blueprism - Not able to spy elements - automation

I am using Blueprism to launch a URL in browser to spy it. I am able to launch the URL using the application modeller, but not able to spy it. The "Identify" option itself does not appear in blue prism. What is the problem and what is the solution ?

In spying a web application, key things to note for your application modeler;
1. your application modeler must be a "Browser-Based Application"
2. Launching from an executable or attaching to one. (Assuming you are launching from an executable from your question)
3. Specify url.
From your question. you are able to launch the browser from the application modeler. the most possible problem is you missing step 1 as mentioned above. Confirm your application modeler is specified as "Browser-Based Application"

Check a few things : is your modeler attached to the browser, are you in the right mode (for ease of use I would recommend using IE in HTML mode), and if that doesn't work try accessibility mode.

Try these simple steps:
Close the browser application and let the Blue Prism open your browser.
Try testing your object in Object Studio.
Now open your application modeler and launch. Check and you will find the identify option appeared.

If you launch application from Google Chrome, then you can get this error because in Google Chrome it's not possible to Spy and launch the applications. Any RPA Tools will support only Internet Explorer

Related

Can you change Visual Studio 2022's default browser for Dockerised ASP .NET Core applications?

When debugging my ASP .NET Core Web API application in Visual Studio 2022, I have the Docker configuration set to launch a browser:
This browser defaults to Edge. Is there a way to change this, to Firefox for example? That is my browser of choice and I would prefer it to simply open a new tab in an existing instance of that rather than an entirely separate Edge window.
Firefox is set as my default browser.
Thanks.
You can choose a default browser to use with the docker profile but it's not clear how to modify the list of possible browsers or if you can modify the launch settings for those browsers... anyway, from the debug toolbar menu you'll see the very small drop down menu arrow. Clicking on that gives you a series of drop down menus that lets you choose a browser.
Note the "Browse With..." does not work for me. The project rebuilds and nothing happens when I click that. And "Select Web Browsers..." gives a limited choice of chrome, edge, IE.
Turns out it does seem to use the default browser.
This is a new install of Win 11, and I had installed Firefox within the same session as my attempted debugging with it - a reboot seemed to result in VS using it as expected.
The default browser behaviour is documented here.

How can you interact with the Windows desktop when using TestCafe

I need to use TestCafe to perform actions within our Electron app, however I also need to perform actions on the Windows desktop (e.g. click taskbar, launch other apps).
Since TestCafe can only interact with what is within the browser window, I have attempted to use Appium to essential run TestCafe (calling the commandline from C#) and then performing the Windows desktop actions through WinAppDriver however this feels like a kludge.
Are there other methods of arranging this or a framework that would be more elegant?
Thanks for any insights
m
You are right - TestCafe can only interact with what is within the browser window, but not outside it.
You can also check out the testcafe-browser-provider-webdriverio plugin. Its author claims that this provider can connect to an Appium server.
I have successfully used robotjs to interact with the desktop (mouse move, click, etc.). This seems to be an excellent choice at the moment. Just install alongside TestCafe in your node project.

Does Microsoft UI Automation Framework work with Chrome, Python and Java Apps?

I am working on an automation project, in which I need to capture the activities [ application launched, data entered, input type etc.] user performs on a desktop. I came across Microsoft UI Automation framework which so far works well for native windows based applications like MS Office, .NET apps etc. However I did not find any useful information / samples of capturing the information from different web browsers [Chrome is a must], Python apps, Java Apps etc. Can someone please confirm whether MS UI Automation Framework supports such apps. Any working example to extract user activities from these apps would be highly appreciated. Thanks.
Chrome only supports UI Automation for toolbars, tabs, menu, buttons around the web page. Everything that's rendered as a web page is not seen by UIA.
For the web page content, the easiest way is to use Selenium (driven by the ChromeDriver), which is kind of a de facto standard for browsers, and has nothing to do with UIA.
To test if an app supports UIA, and how far it does, it's very easy, just run UIA's Inspect tool and check the UI tree over that application.
Some additions to Simon's answer...
Chrome page content can be seen by UIA if you run chrome --force-renderer-accessibility. Only for existing Chrome process it won't work. Though user can create a new tab chrome://accessibility manually and enable UIA for all or some chosen pages. This method also works for AT-SPI accessibility technology on Linux. Of course, Selenium WebDriver is an industry standard here. But another way exists. Both Mozilla and IE support UIA by default.
Inspect.exe can be simply downloaded from this GitHub repo.
Regarding Java apps it depends on the app type. Your chances is about 50/50.
WxPython or PyQt5 are good for UIA. TkInter or Kivy apps are not.
P.S. There is an example how to drag a file from explorer.exe and drop to Google Drive in Chrome using Python library pywinauto.
I'm a bit late to the party..
But Chromes accessibility features are only activated once something tries to access it's accessibility.
If you call AccessibleObjectFromWindow ([DllImport("oleacc.dll")]) with the window handle an existing chrome window will have its accessibility activated (and you'll see the actual web page content in UIA!).
If the chrome window is opened after your app is running - Chrome pings open processes for any open accessibility apps... for that you use AccessibleObjectFromEvent and the event you're responding to comes from the windows pipeline: EVENT_SYSTEM_ALERT = 0x0002 .
The bottom line is - you have to tell chrome that there's something installed that wants to access it's web page content.
Oh! and your application has to be signed!! Unsigned apps won't be able to access web content - I think that's the same in firefox too.
I hope this helps someone in the future.
See:
https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/accessibility

Saucelabs tests block on browser allow dialog

My web app uses IndexedDB and I'm testing on SauceLabs. Some months back my tests ran but now they block on a browser dialog that says "http://gbserver3.cs.unc.edu/" wants to: store files on this device", with an Allow button.
This is Win7 and Chrome or Firefox. Likely others too.
How can I dismiss or prevent this dialog?
Update: I have discovered that if I don't ask for quota I don't get the popup and my tests succeed. I'd still like to learn how to get rid of that dialog.
we are using Nightwatch.js in our project and we were facing the same issue.
What actually did the trick was using --unlimited-storage switch when launching the browser.
(List of other command line switches for Chromium can be found here)

Create/embed Firefox/Chrome base browser in Visual Studio

Im creating a freeware application (long live the free community) and I'm trying to add various features that might drive people to use the application such as implementing whatsapp web https://web.whatsapp.com/ into the app so that the user will always have an "always on top" window with their chats rather than everytime having to switch tabs if they're multitasking on their browser.
The problem i am having is that the built in Browser control with VS 2013 does not work with whatsapp web and i get the option to use supported browsers like firefox...chrome...safari.
Is there anyway to make a VB.NET application open an actual chrome/firefox based browser within itself?
I found an article on Gecko Browser...I am not sure if web.whatsapp.com would see this as a firefox browser: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?692005-Mozilla-Firefox-Gecko-Xulrunner-in-VB-NET-%28versions-14-and-up%29
Help appreciated.