README.md

Manatee DOM Inspector

A custom implementation of a Chrome devtools-like inspector for Sirenia's Manatee RPA application.
Useful for when you need a closer look at how Manatee sees the application, or need a debugger capable of remembering code and displaying complex objects.

Currently consists of 3 pages:

Inspect

Shows a tree view of a selected field. The displayed is the output of running .inspect() on the field the user selects, and can optionally use the useCachedUI or collectTexts options. Any element in the tree can be selected to see its properties.

Selector

An attempt at a UI for choosing the most appropriate selcetor for the chosen field. In development, currently on limited use.

Console

A debugger capable of running arbitrary code in Manatee and displaying the returned data. Compared to the built-in debugger this saves you from running JSON.stringify() on the data you want to debug, and remembers the entered code across restarts.

Usage

In order for the application to communicate with the local Manatee instance, it needs to know which ports to open a WebSocket connection to. Currently these ports can be found using the ManateeDiscoverer.exe application, found in <ManateeInstallDir>\Tools\NativeHost\Discoverer\ManateeDiscoverer.exe. The ports returned by this application must be given to the DOM inspector through the search parameters manateePort and manateePortSecure respectively.

It is recommended to create a flow to open the application with the correct search parameters:

var INSPECTOR_URL = "https://manatee-inspector.jfagerberg.me";

function openInChrome(url) {
  return Processes.spawn(
    "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe",
    ["--new-window", "--app=" + JSON.stringify(url)].join(" ")
  );
}

function getManateePorts() {
  // NOTE: you should replace this path with whatever path your ManateeDiscoverer.exe is located at
  var p = Processes.spawn(
    "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Sirenia\\Manatee\\prod-rsd+epjsyd\\Tools\\NativeHost\\Discoverer\\ManateeDiscoverer.exe"
  );
  p.stdin("\x1f\x00\x00\x00" + JSON.stringify({ data: { message: "port" } }));
  var outp = null;
  p.stdout(1).then(function (line) {
    outp = "" + line;
    p.kill();
  });
  p.wait(500);
  outp = outp.substring(4);
  var data;
  try {
    data = JSON.parse(outp);
  } catch (e) {
    throw new Error("Failed to parse JSON from ManateeDiscoverer: " + outp);
  }
  return data.data;
}

function run() {
  var ports = getManateePorts();
  openInChrome(
    INSPECTOR_URL +
      "?manateePort=" +
      ports.port +
      "&manateePortSecure=" +
      ports.securePort
  );
}

run();