Cannot use variables in Selenium IDE

[Lumios64]

💥 Regression Report

A clear and concise description of what the regression is.

The keyword to call variables ${} is no longer recognized by Selenium, and is treated as a string of text instead.
Encountered this issue while testing an automated bot after following a tutorial.

Last working version

Worked up to version:
Unknown given I haven't used Selenium up until recently, but based on third-party sources, it worked at least until 02/28/2023.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/inputs-outputs-web
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cloud-app-management/2019.3.0?topic=test-passing-variable-values-selenium-script

Stopped working in version:
3.17.4

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Add a store command with a target variable and a number of your choice, then an echo command that is supposed to call the variable.
Like so :

Command|Target|Value
store | number | 1
echo |${number}|

In the example above, the output is "${number}".

Expected behavior

A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

The echo command should return the number "1".

Project file reproducing this issue (highly encouraged)

Please provide a project file .side that reproduces this issue.

Github would not let me post the file, so I changed the filetype to txt.
probtrimmed.txt

It was trimmed down to include only the code that errored, and I added comments to describe what the code does.

Environment

OS: Ubuntu Studio 22.04
Selenium IDE Version: 3.17.4
Selenium SIDE Runner Version: None, using only the WebExtension
Node version: None
Browser: Firefox
Browser Version: 115.0.2 (64-bit)

[Pun-slinger]

v4 of Selenium IDE and selenium-side-runner is also facing this problem then it comes to asserting. Only the "Assert" command is spared from this issue

[toddtarsi]

@Pun-slinger - Thanks for letting me know. Easy fix. 😄
@Lumios64 - The v3 IDE hasn't changed in a very long time. I'd be surprised if variable processing was completely broken.

[toddtarsi]

@Pun-slinger - Okay, so around here in this file:

selenium-ide/packages/side-runtime/src/webdriver.ts

Line 1577 in 15fe344

WebDriverExecutor.prototype.doAssert = composePreprocessors(

We do all of this composePreprocessors garbage. Basically, the first argument is target, the second argument is value. Which asserts are you not seeing this on, and is it not swapping on target or value? Basically, wherever its missing, I'll just replace null with interpolateString and cut a release.

[Pun-slinger]

@toddtarsi it's missing on pretty much every asserts aside from Assert command (title, value, text, selected label, selected value, element present, etc...), and from what I could tell, it's not swapping on both target and value

[toddtarsi]

@Pun-slinger - I added some of them in this commit:

747b343#diff-9e4aa485e596920bbae5fa60cfc15763794c4d5bfb1801ae935cf450fb4c61ff

Let me know if this helps for a few of them and we can just keep adding the things.

[Pun-slinger]

@Pun-slinger yep, they all worked. "Times" command is having the same issue so that should be next to be added

Edit: Assert Selected Label need added

[toddtarsi]

@Pun-slinger - Added, thanks!

[toddtarsi]

@Lumios64 - I'm not sure whats going on there, but I'd be happy to resolve any experiences of this in v4 alpha:

https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium-ide/releases/tag/latest

[toddtarsi]

@Lumios64 - I'll leave the issue open for now, and if I don't hear from you for a while, I'll close it.

[Lumios64]

Good afternoon, I have a question. If variable processing couldn't possibly be malfunctioning, then I must be missing something. The documentation has not been very helpful either, it doesn't explain the most basic features of Selenium and only offers rudimentary examples of code which has only heightened my frustration with this problem.

Do I have to install SIDE Runner or Node to use variables? If it should be possible to use variables without either, then something else must have gone wrong.

[toddtarsi]

@Lumios64 - I primarily maintain v4. It might be that v3 doesn't have string interpolation enabled for this command.

Looking at the source here, I see it on for the value on send keys:

https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium-ide/blob/v3/packages/selianize/src/command.js#L374

But then I don't see an equivalent for the arguments on emit echo. So, it won't log the substituted variables when you echo.
If you're using v4, I'd be happy to fix it. Otherwise, I'm not really interested.

https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium-ide/releases/tag/latest

[Lumios64]

Sorry for not replying sooner. As I said on my issue, the version I use is 3.17.4 on Firefox, I didn't know it was deprecated because I downloaded it off Mozilla's addon store and it is still the latest version to this day.

I do not like using Nightly builds of programs I rely on because they may have bugs. It's cool if that issue was resolved in version 4, I believe you when you say string interpolation might be the problem.

I will wait until version 4 has been fully-fledged and is ready to be distributed onto the Mozilla store and Google's webstore. My browser is set to automatically download any new update for my extensions to keep them up-to-date.