About RegEx Search
A regular expression, or RegEx, is a special text string for describing a search pattern. This makes them ideally suited for searching, text processing, and data validation. Using the RegEx search capabilities in selectors enables you to identify multiple target elements with a single search execution. Without RegEx, multiple selectors would have been built to identify each target element.
How RegEx Search Works
In order to use the RegEx search capabilities, a matching option needs to be included in the tag of the element you want to identify, as follows:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
matching:<tag_name>=’regex’ | Allows you to specify the target search tag, determined by the <tag_name> value. |
<tag_name>='<regex_command>' | Allows you to specify the search pattern through the <regex_command> expression used to identify the <tag_name>. |
Currently, the RegEx search is supported by the following selector types:
| Selector Type | Support |
|---|---|
<wnd> |  |
<html> | |
<webctrl> | |
<java> | |
<ctrl> | |
<sap> | |
<silverlight> | |
| Tags which identify a process name. Example: <html app="firefox.exe"> |  |
Examples of Using RegEx Search
Let's assume that we want to create an automation process that targets the Calculator application. However, for the purpose of this example, the value of the <name> tag alters between 0 and 2. Without the RegEx search, two selectors would have been built, one for each value of the <name> tag, as follows:
<wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' />
<uia cls='LandmarkTarget' />
<uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is 0' role='text' />
< wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' />
<uia cls='LandmarkTarget' />
<uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is 2' role='text' />
Introducing a RegEx search inside the second <uia> tag makes it possible to generate a single selector to match both cases. A valid selector, in this case, looks something like this:
<wnd app='applicationframehost.exe' appid='Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App' title='Calculator' />
<uia cls='LandmarkTarget' />
<uia automationid='CalculatorResults' name='Display is \d' role='text' matching:name='regex' />
The matching:name='regex' attribute instructs our selector to use RegEx to identify the <name> tag, while the <name='Display is \d'> command returns all the numerical values for the <name> tag it identifies.
Below are a couple of more examples on how RegEx search works and what values it returns:
| Regular Expression | Description | Returned Results |
|---|---|---|
(.*RPA.*)|(.*Robotic Process Automation*) | Matches every string containing the RPA or Robotic Process Automation strings. | (...) leading RPA tool (...) UiPath is a Robotic Process Automation (...) |
^Index[0-5] | Matches every string starting with the Index value, followed by any number between 0 and 5. | Index5 Index03 |
Updated 2 years ago