mabl uses a number of intelligent find strategies to locate elements in your web application. If the target element is very similar to other elements on the page, mabl prompts you to provide additional context to tailor the find strategies and create even more resilient steps.
For example, perhaps your application has a grid with 14 similar elements, and you select the first element in the third row. Did you pick this element because of the content of the element, the class name, or the href? Instead of using XPath or CSS, you can identify the important attributes so that mabl can easily locate the element even if its position or content has changed.
Use cases
Providing mabl with additional information is particularly useful when:
- Selecting a checkbox for rows in a list or table that contain a given value
- Selecting an element based on its position in a list or table
- Finding the correct element when the position may change between test runs
- Filtering and validating columns in a table to ensure that they are unique or contain specific information
Providing contextual information in the mabl Trainer
When mabl determines that it may need to gather additional information, it will ask you to "Provide more context" or prompt you with the question “Why did you click this element?”. When providing this context, the Trainer will display how many similar elements have been found and highlight each relevant element.
Based on how many similar elements have been found, the Trainer generates a confidence rating. The confidence rating conveys how confident mabl is in finding the intended element when the test runs in the cloud, especially if the content or position changes over time:
- If many similar elements are found, the confidence rating is low.
- If find criteria only matches the target element, the confidence rating is high.
To increase the confidence rating, select one or two uniquely identifying attributes for the target element. These identifying attributes can be customized based on your use case. For example, you can tell mabl to look for an element that contains a particular variable as the innerText. If the attribute you are looking for is not initially displayed, select “Show me more options” to view all available attributes.
To provide context for a step at a later time, click on the "Provide more context?" badge displayed at the bottom of the step. Likewise, the attributes for a step can be modified by accessing Configure Find settings for the step.
