ask() shows the question in terminal window. This is not intuitive if automation is running on the Chrome browser and a prompt appears in terminal window to ask for user input. Raising an issue to update behaviour to show prompt in Chrome browser, if it's available.

PS - similar issue exists if chrome_browser = False and visual_automation = True. The terminal may not be in the foreground during the automation flow to be visible for user inputs. However, there isn't a consistent way to show SikuliX popup with focus across platforms. Thus KIV for now.

user query to original TagUI project

I am currently working on evaluating open source RPA tools, specifically TagUI. I have a few queries regarding the TagUI Chrome Web Browser Extension. They are as follows:

• I learned that the exported data, i.e. that of the image above, is for TagUI. I was wondering if there is a possibility that this data extracted can be in Python language directly, so that the action can be tested and recoded in Python.
• Hence, I was wondering if you have any plans on developing the Chrome Web Browser Extension, to include support for the TagUI-Python API.

Thank you and have a great week ahead.

During usage, the following temporary files will be generated in order to use TagUI -

tagui_python - simple flow to initiate TagUI live mode
tagui_python.raw - raw file for TagUI module expansion
tagui_python.js - generated JavaScript code for TagUI
tagui_local.js - TagUI for Python custom functions file
tagui_python.log - log file for automation execution
tagui_python.txt - to retrieve data output from TagUI

When debug mode is on using debug(True), only tagui_python.log and tagui_python.txt will be retained while the rest are deleted. That essentially means that the first 4 files above do not really add value to the typical TagUI for Python user. Having them in the script folder during execution may add clutter, clunkiness and confusion.

Furthermore, TagUI for Python has been downloaded over 5000 times since initial release, without users reporting issue that requires above 4 temporary files for debugging and troubleshooting.

Raising issue to update code to immediately delete the first 4 files upon connecting to TagUI to remove clutter. For the last 2 files, they will be retained until close() is used, where they will be deleted if debug(False) (default).

I see "TagUI process ended unexpectedly" this message from time to time, accompanied by a stream of errors telling me to use init() before other things? Is it possible to have things fail more loudly?

Raising an issue to make a commit on above improvement

Now I understand that from tagui.py that it is downloading from

def setup():
    """function to setup TagUI to user home folder on Linux / macOS / Windows"""

    # get user home folder location to setup tagui
    if platform.system() == 'Windows':
        home_directory = os.environ['APPDATA']

Would it be good to change the code such that it does a check on whether the tagui folder exists and uses the existing folder rather than download a new one?

I ask this because I'm working in an environment where remote host downloading is not allowed, (yay web isolation, no curl either).
So by inspecting the code, I know that this folder is required and I've downloaded manually from https://github.com/tebelorg/Tump/releases/download/v1.0.0/TagUI_Windows.zip

Tried another sample code on windows 10:

import tagui as t
t.init()
t.url('https://www.google.com')
t.type('//input[@class="gLFyf gsfi"]', 'weather singapore[enter]')
temp = t.read('wob_tm')
print("temp = " + temp)
t.close()

Error message

[TAGUI][ERROR] - following happens when starting TagUI...

Fatal: Access is denied; did you install phantomjs?

[TAGUI][ERROR] - use init() before using url()
[TAGUI][ERROR] - use init() before using type()
[TAGUI][ERROR] - use init() before using read()
temp =
[TAGUI][ERROR] - use init() before using close()

Should have phantomjs installed. I'm running TagUI on this machine.

• python package project skeleton
• invoking, controlling, closing tagui
• compatibility with python 2 and 3
• conversion to tagui python module

• implement basic tagui steps - https://github.com/kelaberetiv/TagUI#steps-description
  • http(s)
  • click
  • rclick
  • dclick
  • hover
  • type
  • select
  • read
  • show
  • save
  • snap
  • load
  • echo
  • dump
  • write
  • ask

• implement pro tagui steps - https://github.com/kelaberetiv/TagUI#steps-description
  • keyboard
  • mouse
  • table
  • wait
  • check
  • upload
  • download
  • api
  • run
  • dom
  • vision
  • timeout

• implement tagui helper functions - https://github.com/kelaberetiv/TagUI#helper-functions
  • present()
  • visible()
  • count()
  • url()
  • title()
  • text()
  • timer()
  • mouse_xy()
  • mouse_x()
  • mouse_y()

• address known and potential issues
  • send single quote in text string input
  • echo with correct quotes in tagui log
  • parameter to invoke visual automation
  • accept (x,y) coordinates as parameters
  • validate sending of backslash correctly
  • validate path for filename parameters
  • auto sikulix jython 1st-run integration

• pre-release iteration, testing and docs
  • review, iterate, refine features list
  • auto download + setup + test tagui
  • test usage with python 2 and 3 envs
  • test usage python interactive mode
  • test usage with mac, windows, linux
  • test usage with jupyter notebook
  • test, validate, tune all functions
  • github and pypi documentation

• announce and start distribution

user query

I have a question regarding OCR automation. I tried reading from a jpg image but it is unable to find the image. However, the code works if I read a png file.

Appreciate if you could help with this as I am trying to automate a laborious process that involves extracting numbers from hundreds of images that are saved in jpg format.

I was able to install tagui using pip but is unable to start it. t.init() gives

[TAGUI][INFO] - setting up TagUI for use in your Python environment
[TAGUI][INFO] - downloading TagUI (~200MB) and unzipping to below folder...
[TAGUI][INFO] - /Users/my_id
[TAGUI][ERROR] - failed downloading from https://github.com/tebelorg/Tump/releases/download/v1.0.0/TagUI_macOS.zip
False

I am sure I am connected to the internet and I was able to manually download the file (TagUI_macOS.zip). Unzipped to the location but getting same error. Any workarounds?

@kensoh, really excited by your new TagUI-Python as it opens up a whole new spectrum of possibilities in RPA applications, especially interfacing with those established machine learning and deep learning Python frameworks.

Not sure if the following have been documented somewhere,

1. I looked at the command sets between the two.
   TagUI: https://github.com/kelaberetiv/TagUI#steps-description
   TagUI-Python: https://github.com/tebelorg/TagUI-Python#api-reference
   It seems that they are about the same. So is it correct to say that almost all the commands in TagUI are supported in TagUI-Python?

2. Can you highlight some major differences between the two (besides one written in TagUI script, and the other in Python)?

Hi Ken,

Tried to run a DOS command using your suggestion in: aisingapore/TagUI#473

The following works in TagUI:

run cmd /c dir
echo run_result

In TagUI-Python on windows 10:

run_result = t.run("cmd /c dir")
print("run_result)

The above will give the error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test1.py", line 2, in <module>
    run_result = t.run("cmd /c dir")
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\site-packages\tagui.py", line 1173, in run
    shell=True))
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\subprocess.py", line 395, in check_output
    **kwargs).stdout
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\subprocess.py", line 487, in run
    output=stdout, stderr=stderr)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command 'cmd /c dir; exit 0' returned non-zero exit status 1.

I have tried to run a simple script to navigate into a website in python. Aparently tagUi is not able to initalize due to a missing MSVCR100.dll dependency.

I have tried to reinstall the package with this link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=14632

After reinstallation and reboting my machine, the result is the same. I am using python with Anaconda and Windows 10, probably is because of this?

Thanks!

Background

Have spent the last few weeks trying to convert one complicated script I’ve written using TagUI into TagUI-Python to print 3 different reports across two corporate websites. The printing of the report is not that straightforward as it involves some lookup of values before you can print the report. To minimize the duplication of codes, I stored those commonly used functions in separate files and call these functions using the tagui command. As a result, the final app contains more than 50 files!

Result

Pleased to say that I have successfully ported the entire TagUI script into TagUI-Python! The app runs perfectly without any glitch! As I can now combine multiple functions into Python modules, the number of files also drastically reduced form 50+ files to only 3 main files + 4 Python modules.

The only commands that I’ve found to be different between TagUI and TagUI-Python are the two I’ve highlighted earlier:

• write #44
• Run #45

Other than the above, as TagUI-Python runs on top of TagUI, there’s almost no changes required. All that’s required is the translation of the syntax e.g.

• read
  TagUI: read //path/to/selector to var_name
  TagUI-Python: var_name = t.read('//path/to/selector')
• type
  TagUI: type //path/to/selector as string_to_type
  TagUI-Python: t.type('//path/to/selector', 'string_to_type')

Thanks to @kensoh in highlighting the major differences between TagUI and TagUI-Python in Issue #8.

In the reply, Ken mentioned that "TagUI for Python only has a subset of TagUI's features." I have been wondering why then do people want to switch to TagUI-Python when TagUI has more features, and TagUI-Python actually runs on top of TagUI (which means that there's an additional layer of TagUI between TagUI-Python and the website).

Decided to convert some of my TagUI scripts into TagUI-Python so that I can have some real comparisons between the two.

After one week of testing TagUI-Python, I must say that I was truly surprised and amazed by TagUI-Python!

First, TagUI-Python can do almost everything that TagUI can do. Conversion is very simple and straightforward - just a change of the syntax. The flow and xpath remains exactly the same, as can be seen in the following sample code.

Second, TagUI-Python is written as a native python package and run as a pure Python script. This means that you can leverage any standard Python packages out there, such as pandas used in the sample code below to save the data as a csv file.

Third, using TagUI-Python, you can now leverage on Python's native data structure (such as lists and classes), and also modules/packages to organize libraries of functions.

So below is a sample code that reads the title and url of a list of books from goodreads.com (total 18 books in that page).

Sample Code 1 - in TagUI

//goodreads.gui
//190706

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/17347.Books_that_ll_help_you_deliver_stunning_presentations
 
read //h1[contains(@class, "h1")] to list_title
echo "list_title = " + list_title
 
num_books = count('//td/a//span[@itemprop="name"]')
echo "num_books = " + num_books

csv_header = '"Sno", "Title", "URL"\r\n'
dump csv_header to book_list.csv
 
for (n=1; n<=num_books; n++)
{
	read (//td/a//span[@itemprop="name"])['+n+'] to book
	echo "book = " + book
 
	read (//td/a/@href)['+n+'] to url2
	echo "url2 = " + url2
 
	record = '"' + n + '","' + book + '","' + url2 + '"' 
    write record to book_list.csv
}

Sample Code 2 - in TagUI-Python

In comparison, the following is the same robot re-written using TagUI-Python

from pandas import DataFrame
import tagui as t
t.init()

t.url('https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/17347.Books_that_ll_help_you_deliver_stunning_presentations')

list_title = t.read('//h1[contains(@class, "h1")]')
print("list_title = " + list_title)

num_books = t.count('//td/a//span[@itemprop="name"]')
print("num_books = ", num_books)

books = [''] * num_books
url = [''] * num_books
sno = [''] * num_books
for n in range(1, num_books+1):
	sno[n-1] = n

	books[n-1] = t.read(f'(//td/a//span[@itemprop="name"])[{n}]/..')
	print(n, "book = "+books[n-1])

	url[n-1] = t.read(f'(//td/a/@href)[{n}]')
	print("   url = "+url[n-1])

Books_Info = {'Sno':sno, 'Title': books, 'URL': url}
df = DataFrame(Books_Info, columns=['Sno','Title', 'URL'])
export_csv = df.to_csv ('book_list1.csv', index = None)

Note the use of pandas to save data to .csv file. With TagUI-Python, you can now leverage on all the standard python packages out there, including those machine learning libraries including Numpy, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, Keras, etc.! This will be one of the major reason for moving to TagUI-Python if you're working on machine learning or intelligent RPA project.

eg clicking UI elements by specifying their image snapshots

Hi all,
i am using visual automation from tagui to scrap data from an mobile app via bluestack

currently, my solution is to use multiple windows VM on my computer.
each running an instance of tagui and bluestack.

does anyone know if it is possible to let a tagui instance to only focus on the screen of a certain bluestack instance via process id?

At present, if visual automation mode is not on and snap('page.png', 'screenshot.png') is used, there is no error message saying that init(visual_automation = True) is needed to use this. Raising an issue to show error message instead of hanging waiting for SikuliX response.

@kensoh, trying to set up TagUI-Python on my Windows 10 machine.

1. Have run "pip install tagui"

2. Running "pip list" show

Package    Version
---------- -------
tagui      1.1.0

3. Test script as follows:

import tagui as t
t.init()
t.echo("test123")
t.close()

4. Running the above script from command prompt, it shows the following and stops there:

[TAGUI][INFO] - setting up TagUI for use in your Python environment
[TAGUI][INFO] - downloading TagUI (~200MB) and unzipping to below folder...
[TAGUI][INFO] - C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming

5. If I press Ctrl-C, the following messages appear:

[TAGUI][INFO] - setting up TagUI for use in your Python environment
[TAGUI][INFO] - downloading TagUI (~200MB) and unzipping to below folder...
[TAGUI][INFO] - C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test2.py", line 2, in <module>
    t.init()
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\site-packages\tagui.py", line 359, in init
    if not setup():
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\site-packages\tagui.py", line 208, in setup
    if not download(tagui_zip_url, home_directory + '/' + tagui_zip_file):
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\site-packages\tagui.py", line 1092, in download
    import urllib.request; urllib.request.urlretrieve(download_url, filename_to_save)
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\urllib\request.py", line 276, in urlretrieve
    block = fp.read(bs)
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\http\client.py", line 447, in read
    n = self.readinto(b)
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\http\client.py", line 491, in readinto
    n = self.fp.readinto(b)
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\socket.py", line 589, in readinto
    return self._sock.recv_into(b)
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\ssl.py", line 1052, in recv_into
    return self.read(nbytes, buffer)
  File "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\lib\ssl.py", line 911, in read
    return self._sslobj.read(len, buffer)
KeyboardInterrupt

6. Are there any other settings I need to do to get TagUI-Python running on Windows 10? Is there anything that I've missed?

@kensoh, In TagUI, you generate an intermediate .js script.

Out of curiosity, for TagUI-Python, do you generate an intermediate TagUI script that we can modify and run directly using TagUI?

Users may get connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] when running pip install tagui. This is usually due to company policy that blocks or do not trust websites by default.

Hi Ken,

I've encountered an error while crawling the products from Lazada. The error is due to the "R" symbol inside a certain product name: Windows 10 Home (64-bit) NVIDIA®

Attaching the python codes below:
crawlProduct.txt

TagUI stopped once it hit the error, how can I handle the error so that it will continue to crawl the next product?

Best regards,
Yang Liu

Dear Ken Soh,

From 1st July I am facing issue with the python script. Whenever I'm running the python script it starts downloading the update file, but fails after some time which leads to error in the execution.
Even I downloaded the file from the link and placed it in the desired folder but even though the issue is not solved. I am getting the following error.

Hi! I was hoping to use TagUI to automate generating of a .png image, as part of a small personal project. This is done through a website:

https://www.myfakeinfo.com/nationalidno/get-china-citizenidandphoto.

As I attempted to take a snapshot of the image generated, using t.snap('log1','front.png'), where 'log1' is the element id, ''front.png' is the intended saved image. However, this action takes a screenshot of the whole webpage, instead of just saving the image.

I was just wondering if this is your intended output, and could there be anyway I can use TagUI API to carry out saving image?

Thanks!

There is a bug in the timeout step in upstream TagUI project (aisingapore/TagUI#497). When timeout() is used with visual_automation = False, it hangs indefinitely. Raising a PR for a new release that implements the bug-fix upstream. Below are technical details of the bug -

In commit aisingapore/TagUI@5cba169 from issue aisingapore/TagUI#443 and PR aisingapore/TagUI#453 the goal is to also update SikuliX integration internal timeout variable. There is a bug introduced that makes timeout step hangs if visual automation is not used.

Hi @kensoh, while doing research and testing on OCR, I found that TagUI-Python is extremely functional in this aspect. It is able to carry out OCR on webpage images (t.url -> t.read) and local images as well (using visual_automation = True, chrome_browser = False -> reading using coordinates).

I also researched and learned that there is a TagUI RPA Studio, her OCR is more user friendly as users do not need to use t.mouse_xy() to find the coordinates. Also Kantu's OCR is also able to detect images and do search and verification, which could possibly be added into TagUI-Python in the future.

user query

May I know where can I get the .WHL file of TagUI for Python?

This is not an issue per se but more of a question: Is there a way to automatically generate the commands for a series of actions as a script, out of the actions itself when performed once.

For example, a script records the actions and one can simply perform the actions once, then the corresponding commands are created.

Hi Ken,

Just tried some write() in TagUI-Python

Found out that

• write in TagUI automatically includes new line at the end of the write string
• write() in TagUI-Python does not

Can I confirm the above behaviour?

Would be great if the two can be standardized - so that it's easier for people who need to port scripts from TagUI to TagUI-Python.

In #25, you commented that:

There are also major advantages of TagUI for Python over a number of Python packages for
digital automation. Some of them can only automate webapps, some can only automate
keyboard + mouse. But this tool can do all, plus ability to automate using computer vision and
extract info using OCR, all within one seamless API

Currently in TagUI-Python, when one issues t.init(), it will open a new empty chrome window.

For windows/desktop apps, or if the user only want to automate keyboard + mouse, the empty chrome window will "confuse" the user, or even block the windows/desktop app required for image-based recognition.

Possible to have the same behaviour as that of TagUI i.e. a new chrome window will only appear at the first initiation of http://

Hi Ken,

Just found out that visible() is not present in TagUI-Python!

Is there any particular reason why this is not ported over from TagUI to TagUI-Python?

I'm using present() in the meantime, though it could happen that an element is present but not visible. So being able to test if an element is visible is quite useful sometimes.

It is possible that TagUI processes (main TagUI, integration background processes - SikuliX, Chrome, Chrome browser) are not exited cleanly under certain conditions. For eg, if user Ctrl+C to kill a TagUI for Python script, or if user forgets to use close() to gracefully close off the running processes.

These dead processes have insignificant impact to TagUI for Python functionality. However they can cause unnecessary drain on battery and CPU cycles. Raising this issue to make a commit that runs a TagUI script that flush all TagUI-related processes.

This will be run within init() so that an accidental Ctrl+C or forgetting to close() allows immediate resumption of use by relaunching Jupyter notebook or Python interactive shell or Python script, and using init(). Placing within close() is meaningless for the scenarios where dead processes happen.

On Windows, this error message can appear, even without showing any errors above the message. This happens if the folder path of the folder containing the Python script has space in it.

Raising an issue to officially support OCR use case in TagUI for Python.

Transparency (0% opacity) is supported by SikuliX in .png images, for eg using an image of an UI element with transparent background to enable clicking on an UI element that appears on different backgrounds on different occasions.

A further example is an image of the window or frame (PDF viewer, MS Word, textbox etc) with the center content of the image set as transparent. This allows using read() and snap() to perform OCR and save snapshots for application windows, containers, frames, textboxes with varying content.

t.read('image_preview_frame.png')
t.snap('application_window_frame.png')

Also, for read() and snap(), x1, y1, x2, y2 coordinates pair can be used to define the region of interest on the screen to perform OCR or capture snapshot. Upstream feature has been implemented in TagUI and can now also be implemented here. For example -

t.read(200, 200, 600, 400)
t.snap(200, 200, 600, 400, 'results.png')

This is pretty sweet stuff but I think a little more sugar can't hurt. I have found the following to be useful because such automations can be quite brittle:

def t_wait_for(item, dt = 0.1):
	while not t.present(item):
		t.wait(0.1)

Then again, it strikes me that many of the actions could benefit from having a wait keyword argument to indicate whether to have this done before the relevant action.

Furthermore, time outs can be included as yet another keyword argument. (There already is an implicit time out of 0, why not customise it?)

What do you think?

Hi Ken,

In windows 10, the following works:

run_result = t.run("echo %SYSTEMROOT%")
print(run_result)

Result is: C:\WINDOWS; exit 0

While it's not difficult in python to use some function to remove that "; exit 0" at the end, thought it might be more convenient for users if TagUI-Python does not return that in the result string.

Dear Ken Soh,

I am facing issue to select multiple options in a box. I am attaching an image of the box. Please suggest me how can do it.

I want to select all options except for the first two as shown in the pic below. Please suggest how to get this done.

Thanks in advance.

Hello Ken Soh,
I am working on a TAGUI project where whenever the script for web automation runs the current date should be automatically written in the calendar on the webpage. I am attaching a picture of the calendar followed by this post. Please suggest to me how to automate the calendar.

Whenever there is a need to reschedule or repeat our groceries delivery on RedMart.com, there is a need to manually add back all the previous items one by one to create a new order. There is no option to repeat an order (unbelievable).

My wife is very frustrated with that, because in between clicks there is so much waiting time, and the website cannot be ctrl-clicked to open new tabs to do this efficiently. So I wrote below automation script for her. Instead of wasting time doing mindless work every week, now she can double-click this Python script and automate the process herself.

PS - we have since left Singapore and no longer use RedMart, thus below code would likely not work with updates to the website. But it should give you an idea of what's possible with rpa package and how you can approach a scenario.

import rpa as r
r.init()

# get URL of old groceries order to re-add all items to cart
r.url(r.ask('Paste the URL of your groceries order and login to RedMart'))

# set a maximum 5-minute timeout for user to login to RedMart
r.timeout(300)

# use exist() function with XPath to check if logged in
if not r.exist('(//*[@class="order-item"])[1]//*[@class="item-pic"]'):
    r.dom('alert("Quitting as groceries order page is not detected after 5 min")')

# change back to default of 10 seconds to quit fast on error
r.timeout(10)

# get count of total items to place order for, using XPath identifier
total_items = r.count('//*[@class="order-item"]//*[@class="item-pic"]')

# to track total quantity of items to order
total_quantity = 0

# loop to add all the items and their quantity
for item in range(1, total_items + 1):
    # get count of quantity to order for item, before clicking into item
    item_quantity = int(r.read('(//*[@class="order-item"])['+ str(item) + ']//*[@class="item-quantity"]//*[@class="text"]'))
    r.click('(//*[@class="order-item"])[' + str(item) + ']//*[@class="item-pic"]')

    # first click ADD TO CART, then click + icon for subsequent quantity
    if r.exist('ADD TO CART') and not r.present('Out of stock'):

        # handle case where item is in cart, thus no ADD TO CART button
        if r.present('next-icon-add'):
            r.click('next-icon-add')
        else:
            r.click('ADD TO CART')

        for additional_quantity in range(item_quantity - 1):
            r.click('next-icon-add')

        # wait to ensure adding of item has been registered before going back
        r.wait(3)
        total_quantity = total_quantity + item_quantity

    # go back to the previous page with list of items
    r.dom('history.back()')

    # optional wait to slow down the pace of iteration in the automation
    r.wait(3)

# show popup with summary of the quantity of items added before exiting
r.dom('alert("A total quantity of ' + str(total_quantity) + ' items has been added to cart")')
r.close()

user query

I was just reading up on RPA, and found this other tool called PyAutoGUI which looks pretty similar to TagUI. I was wondering if you heard about it, and if you know the differences between TagUI and PyAutoGUI?

Hi Ken,

In TagUI sample folder '9_misc', you have the following sample code:

dom_json = '#header p'
dom return document.querySelector(dom_json).innerText
echo 'dom_result using 1 dom_json variable - ' dom_result

May I know what is the corresponding code in TagUI-Python?

How do we pass in that dom_json?

I suppose you will return dom_result, so we do not need this.

user query

I was trying out the OCR automation using TagUI for Python. Ran through the use cases examples, but got an error as seen below:

This is my code:

import tagui as t
t.init(visual_automation = True)
t.echo(t.read('‪C:/Users/USER/testocr.png'))
t.close()

I have tried using an online .png URL to test out this script, instead of a local .png file. Both does not seem to work.

I would also like to ask what does the echo action do. It says on Github that the purpose of echo is to print text to output, how come the output location is not specified in the script?

TagUI was initially designed for non-developer users. Thus it has provisions that make getting thing done as easy as possible for non-developer users. Steps like show and save are nothing more than read followed by printing out to screen or saving to text file.

Porting these steps over adds bloat to the Python API. Thus raising an issue to track and remove the redundant show() and save(). In place of t.show(), print(t.read()) or t.echo(t.read()) can be used. In place of t.save(), t.dump(t.read()) can be used.

Also, TagUI has a helper function visible() which checks webpage base on CSS rules whether a web element is visible on the page. An element can be present in the backend DOM but hidden from rendering. This helper function would be overly confusing and only adds a small benefit, since present() can be used and most users do not care of the fine line between being present in DOM but not visible. Also, for visual automation, present() and visible() means the same thing. Thus removing visible() improves clarity to standardise usage to present().

@kensoh, in the documentation it says that:

TagUI-Python uses TagUI in LIVE mode to send instructions from Python to it

Does this mean that there is now no more LIVE mode in TagUI-Python?

In TagUI, the LIVE mode is one of the best features that makes TagUI outshine many other RPA tools, even some of the leading ones. Not only does it allow you to do interactive/live testing and debugging, it also makes it possible to automate those websites that require 2FA (e.g. all the banks in Singapore and also many corporate websites).

I use the LIVE mode to pause the script so that people can enter username/password followed by 2FA before continuing.

How to achieve this in TagUI-Python (i.e. pausing the script so that people can perform 2FA)?

Hi Ken,

I see from your sample code https://github.com/tebelorg/TagUI-Python#use-cases

t.wait(2.5)

In TagUI, I thought the wait supports only integer.

In TagUI-Python, it now supports floating point like 2.5 seconds?

Also, can I use python's sleep function in TagUI-Python script? Are there any differences?

import time
time.sleep( 5 )

Hi Ken,

Have been using frame() and popup() in TagUI on some websites that use iFrame and popup windows. They worked amazingly well! And these 2 commands are another unique TagUI features that are not available in many other RPA tools.

Was wondering if these two commands have been ported to TagUI-Python?

The default unzip location is tagui subfolder under user's temporary folder.

However, after some days, operating system may delete files partially within the tagui folder, making it inaccurate to assume that if tagui executable file exists, the installation is working.

Raising issue to iterate on more persistent locations to place the unzip tagui folder. For eg ~/.tagui on Linux and macOS, %APPDATA%\tagui on Windows.

When installing this for Windows (used by the packaged PHP of TagUI), this issue can happens if the Microsoft library was installed in the past but was not removed cleanly for some reason.

@kensoh, while testing python functions, modules, classes, etc. as highlighted in Issue #25, there's one strange behaviour I noticed.

For the 2 scripts below that achieves the same thing:
Sample Code 1 - takes 15.86 seconds
Sample Code 2 - takes 36.92 seconds (almost doubled!)

Can you think of any reasons why this is so?

Sample Code 1 - A simple script in sequential order

from pandas import DataFrame
import tagui as t
t.init()

t.url('https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/17347.Books_that_ll_help_you_deliver_stunning_presentations')

list_title = t.read('//h1[contains(@class, "h1")]')
print("list_title = " + list_title)

num_books = t.count('//td/a//span[@itemprop="name"]')
print("num_books = ", num_books)

books = [''] * num_books
url = [''] * num_books
sno = [''] * num_books
for n in range(1, num_books+1):
	sno[n-1] = n

	books[n-1] = t.read(f'(//td/a//span[@itemprop="name"])[{n}]/..')
	print(n, "book = "+books[n-1])

	url[n-1] = t.read(f'(//td/a/@href)[{n}]')
	print("   url = "+url[n-1])

Books_Info = {'Sno':sno, 'Title': books, 'URL': url}
df = DataFrame(Books_Info, columns=['Sno','Title', 'URL'])
export_csv = df.to_csv ('book_list1.csv', index = None)

Sample Code 2 - using functions

from pandas import DataFrame
import tagui as t
t.init()

def read_list_title():
	list_title = t.read('//h1[contains(@class, "h1")]')
	print("list_title = " + list_title)

def read_element(selector):
	t.hover(selector)
	val = t.read(selector)
	return val

def read_book_list():
	num_books = t.count('//td/a//span[@itemprop="name"]')
	print("num_books = ", num_books)
	sno = [''] * num_books
	books = [''] * num_books
	url = [''] * num_books

	for n in range(1, num_books+1):
		sno[n-1] = n

		books[n-1] = read_element(f'(//td/a//span[@itemprop="name"])[{n}]/..')
		print(n, "book = "+books[n-1])

		url[n-1] = read_element('(//td/a/@href)[{}]'.format(n))
		print("   url = "+url[n-1])

	Books_Info = {'Sno':sno, 
		'Title': books, 
		'URL': url
	}
	save_to_csv(Books_Info, 'book_list2.csv')

def save_to_csv(data, csv_file):
	df = DataFrame(data, columns=['Sno','Title', 'URL'])
	export_csv = df.to_csv (csv_file, index = None)

# main program starts here
t.url('https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/17347.Books_that_ll_help_you_deliver_stunning_presentations')
read_list_title()
read_book_list()