Manatee v2.0

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Dynamic applications ​

A dynamic application is like a regular application but it is defined and instantiated during the execution of a flow. It can be used to create cross-application flows in a more fluid manner than having to define regular applications and using Flow.run to execute parts of the overall flow. Dynamically created applications are attached to or launched on-the-fly.

The Application constructor takes two arguments. The first argument is the application configuration. It can be either a string in which case we will;

  1. try to find an existing application with the same identifier or name and use its configuration, or
  2. construct a NATIVE app configuration with a titleBarContains match based on the argument.

So if you have a “Notepad” application, the example above will use that configuration, if not then it will try to find a window that contains the text “Notepad” in the titlebar and attach to that window as a native application.

If you provide an object to the constructor it will be used as the configuration for the application. In that case the following properties are supported (the same ones you use in Cuesta to configure an app):

  • type the type of the application (see ApplicationTypes for a list of pre-defined types)
  • launchWith the command or url used to launch the application
  • launchWithArguments the arguments given to the process when launching
  • launchWithFlowId the id of the flow to be used to launch the application (this flow must spin up the application)
  • launchTimeout in seconds
  • workingDirectory the working directory to set for the application when launching
  • titleBarContains a regex to match the titlebar when attaching
  • frameContains a regex to match the frame-type when attaching
  • processContains a regex to match the process name when attaching
  • executablePathContains a regex to match the path to the executable when attaching
  • urlContains a regex to match the url when attaching (for web-based applications)
  • jvmLocation an alternative location to look for a JVM (if Java app)
  • openIn select between “window”, “tab”, “app” and “incognito” for browsers that support these modes
  • switches extra switches for embedded Chrome browser
  • popupHandling use “PopupShowInInternalWindow” to use an alternative popup-handling for embedded browsers
  • killOnDetach close the embedded browser once the flow ends (defaults to true)

Most properties are optional, however you need launchWith to be able to launch an application. Only mandatory options are type and at least one of the *Contains properties.

Attach to an existing notepad window:

javascript
var notepad = new Application({ 
  titleBarContains: "Notepad", 
  type: ApplicationTypes.NATIVE 
});

If no existing “Notepad” instance is running we might want to be able to launch a new instance:

javascript
var notepad = new Application({ 
  launchWith: "notepad.exe",
  titleBarContains: "Notepad", 
  type: ApplicationTypes.NATIVE 
});

The second argument contains configuration options for the behaviour of the Application, it can hold the following properties:

  • noImmediateLaunchOrAttach means that we don’t automatically attach/launch the application - you then have to invoke the launchOrAttach method on the application instance to actually interact with the application.
  • noLaunch disables the launch functionality s.t. the application must be running already

Application methods ​

Create a field ​

For convenience you can invoke the newField(...) function on the Application instance instead of creating new Fields using their own constructor.

javascript
var notepad = new Application("Notepad");
var contentField = notepad.newField("**/(name)RichEdit Control");
// is equivalent to 
contentField = new Field("**/(name)RichEdit Control", notepad);

Then you can interact with the field as any normal field invoking .click(...), .inspect(...) etc.

Launch and/or attach ​

The launchOrAttach function will attach (if it can find a matching application) or launch the application. It can be invoked if you have set the noImmediateLaunchOrAttach to true when you created the application.

App methods ​

The Application instance contains approximately (no session()) the same set of methods as on the global App instance. This means you can read the title(), exit() the application, navigate(...) to other urls if the application is browser-based and so on.

Application types ​

A list of predefined application types to use in a dynamic app. The following are available:

javascript
ApplicationTypes.JAVA;
ApplicationTypes.NATIVE;
ApplicationTypes.CHROME;
ApplicationTypes.FIREFOX;
ApplicationTypes.EDGE;
ApplicationTypes.IE;
ApplicationTypes.EMBEDDED_CHROME;
ApplicationTypes.EMBEDDED_IE;
ApplicationTypes.PROXIED_IE;