Dynamic table row selection in Automation Anywhere

Question

Is there a way to iteratively scan each row of a certain table column, whose no. of rows changes every time you refresh the page?

Suppose I have a table that appears on a webpage like so, with radio buttons for each row:

+---+--------+--------+--------+--------+
|   | Letter | Colour | Number | Animal |
+---+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| | A      | Red    | 111    | Dog    |
+---+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| ◯ | B      | Blue   | 222    | Cat    |
+---+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| ◯ | C      | Green  | 333    | Rabbit |
+---+--------+--------+--------+--------+

The columns that appear are always the same, but the number of rows may differ. Suppose I have a variable: number=222, and I have to Search the "Number" column till I find a match, and then click on the corresponding radio button.

How do I...

1. Iteratively scan through all the elements in the "Number" Column?
2. Click the corresponding radio button of the row where a match is found?

Answer 1

You do not need to do any iteration through the table, you just need to write your XPath in such a way that it would point to a radio button only on a row with a specific value in one of the columns.

Let's say your HTML looks like this:

<table>
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <th />
            <th>Letter</th>
            <th>Colour</th>
            <th>Number</th>
            <th>Animal</th>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td><input type="radio" /></td>
            <td>A</td>
            <td>Red</td>
            <td>111</td>
            <td>Dog</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td><input type="radio" /></td>
            <td>B</td>
            <td>Blue</td>
            <td>222</td>
            <td>Cat</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td><input type="radio" /></td>
            <td>C</td>
            <td>Green</td>
            <td>333</td>
            <td>Rabbit</td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

In that case the XPath could look like this:

//tr[td[3]='Blue']/td[1]/input

This means: Find me a row element that has 'Blue' in the third column, and once you do, return the input element in the first column of that row.

There are other ways you can achieve that, XPath axes can be very useful:

//tr/td[3][.='Blue']/preceding-sibling::td/input

This one means: Find me a third column cell with value 'Blue', and once you do, return the input nested in any preceding cell.

The first one makes more sense, the second one is just to show that there are usually more ways to get to unique element identification.