Determining URL for monitoring dynamic page/content

magicpiegod · March 29, 2023, 3:04am

Hello
I’ve searched the forums and found some useful info (and I’m -seriously impressed- with the level of support!), but I’m still new enough with this that I haven’t solved my problem.

I login to a site that lands on a “Dashboard” page with a banner menu. The menu items don’t display specific URLs, but rather load dynamic content in the window (frame?) below the menu. I would like to monitor a dynamic element in one of these dynamically-built pages.

I’ve attached a screenshot that hopefully shows enough to better illustrate the situation. Once logged in on the “Dashboard” page, I click on the “Cookie Exch” menu item, and it loads the list of items below. Clicking on one of those items (the blue bars labeled “Adventurefuls”, “Lemon-Ups”, etc.) displays what (if anything) is available in that section. In the screenshot, the areas boxed in red are examples of when something is available; the area boxed in green is an example of what would show by default if nothing is available (“No offerings at this time”).

I would like to be able to monitor when one of these sections (like the “toffee_section”) changes/has something available (the section boxed in red in the screenshot).

However because I have to login, then drill-down through the menu, and the content is dynamic, I haven’t been able to determine how to setup the URL (and as a result, the element) to monitor.

Any help is appreciated; I can try to provide more code information if needed.
Thanks very much!
Regards,
Mike

raksha · March 29, 2023, 11:38am

@magicpiegod Welcome to the forum and thank you for the detailed explanation!

The steps to display your desired section on the page involves:

Logging in to the page
Clicking on “Cookie Exch” followed by a click on the “toffee-tastic”. This will display the desired element for monitoring

Here are the steps you can follow to set up this monitoring:

Use your browser to log in to the webpage. The browser will save a cookie to keep you logged in for a certain period.
Create a Macro to record all actions on the page. Refer to our article on how to create and use Macros: Macro: Record and Replay Automated Actions – Distill.
Use the Visual Selector to select elements for monitoring. On the “Options” page that appears after making your selections, change the device to your local browser to ensure the page remains logged in while the Macro performs its actions.

Optionally, you can create a Macro to handle both logging in and performing the actions described in step two. This approach allows you to run the monitor in the cloud as well.

I hope this helps.

Thanks!

magicpiegod · March 31, 2023, 6:39am

Thank you very much for the quick reply. I signed up for the Starter level to enable Macros, and was able to get the login and the basic display of the “Cookie Exch” item list recorded and displaying properly.

However, the last step, accessing one of the listed items (in this case “Toffee-Tastic”) does not complete. Instead, that last step eventually times out with an error:

Timeout 30000ms exceeded. Error evaluating statement: “click”. at Position: [6]

Is this referring to a problem with the “Click” in the previous (second-to-last) step, (which seems to be step number 6 in the macro)? I’ve tried adjusting the x,y coordinates slightly, but still get the timeout error evaluating the click at Position 6.

Screenshot is attached.
Thanks very much!
Regards,
Mike

ajitk · March 31, 2023, 12:29pm

Thanks for the update @magicpiegod. The reported error is encountered when the selector could not be found in the page. I was wondering if fixing #toffee_section_wrapper [class*='showhide'] will solve the problem.

Can you share a screenshot or element’s HTML with id toffee_section_wrapper?

magicpiegod · March 31, 2023, 4:21pm

Thanks for taking a closer look. Here’s another screenshot of the HTML elements. Hopefully if shows what you need, but if you need anything else, please let me know. And again, as I said in my first message, I’m very impressed with the support you’re providing for your products!
Regards,
Mike

ajitk · April 1, 2023, 6:23am

Thanks! The element and the autogenerated selector look alright. Can you replace that selector with the following and see if that makes it work? Click the overflow menu icon for the last click step and click “Edit Step”. [

#toffee_section_hdr

Let me know how it goes. Cheers!

magicpiegod · April 1, 2023, 6:45am

Thanks so much for the suggestion.

I edited the last “click” step to read:

#toffee_section_hdr [class*=‘showhide’]

Then I saved, logged out, and re-ran the macro. Unfortunately, it’s the same “Timeout” result on the last step. I’m sorry I don’t have better news!

raksha · April 1, 2023, 7:52am

I just noticed that the page has an iframe and the content at the last step is in an iframe. Can you right-click on the highlighted link in a new tab and use Macros to monitor?

magicpiegod · April 1, 2023, 6:01pm

Thank you for the additional idea. I tried using the URL specified in the iframe src, but unfortunately the page just comes up essentially blank (in display and source).

I did also build a macro using another URL seen in the screenshot:
https://ebudde.littlebrownie.com/static/cookie_exchanges?

That worked for most of the macro, but at the last step it still throws the same “Timeout 30000ms exceeded. Error evaluating statement: “click”. at Position: [6]” error as before, using both selectors mentioned earlier:

#toffee_section_wrapper [class*=‘showhide’]

and

#toffee_section_hdr [class*=‘showhide’]

in the last step.

I’m sorry I’m not more familiar with how all this works, but thanks for your guidance. Obviously any other suggestions are appreciated. I’ll keep trying things as well.

Regards,
Mike

ajitk · April 2, 2023, 5:09pm

Can I take a look at the page to debug how the website works? Sending you DM.