Hi there - I am a new Distill user so please excuse my lack of knowledge.
I have created a web monitor to check a specific spot on a webpage in my Hubspot account to monitor whether a number has increased. When I set it up it will usually work for a while - sometimes an hour or two and sometimes up to a day - but then it inevitably starts producing the SELECTION_EMPTY error. To fix it again I have to edit the monitor by opening the webpage selector and telling it what to check again.
Any advice on how to figure out what is causing the error and stop it from happening?
@kingofpops feel free to ask any questions you may have. i will also encourage searching the forum and docs to look for answers. here is our guide on this topic that has some high level pointers: Troubleshooting errors in checks – Distill
regarding your issue, you may have noticed that distill creates selectors when selecting parts of a page. the selectors look like this:
the visual selector picks identifiers used in the page’s elements to create a selector for the selected element.
these selectors will work well as along the page contains the used identifiers. in case the website updates the website so that the old identifiers are removed, the old selector won’t be able to find the selected element anymore. i think that this is the most likely reason why the selector stops working after some time.
one way to verify this is to compare the selector of an old monitor with the new one.
the solution in such cases is to create the selector manually using identifiers or strategies that are less likely to be affected by a website update.
i can help create a better selector if i have access to the url. as it is a hubspot page requiring login, you can save the page’s content as html and share that instead. you can upload the file to a service like google drive or file.io and share the link.
