This was a painful exercise, taking several hours over a couple days, not including writing this today.
I ran the same macros using v.6.2.8 and v.9.3.8 (the latest) in Chrome. There is one macro which calls another; both run against two different websites, respectively.
Below are screenshots of the CSV output files.
Image 1 - v.6.2.8:
- all items were successfully retrieved on first attempt.
Image 2 - v9.3.8:
- multiple attempts (delineated by red lines) with varying results. The last attempt retrieved all results successfully.
(Note: the black line is to hide an entry that was recently added to the list - it can be ignored.)
Some other attempts, not shown here, retrieved nothing at all.
Clearly, the results are wildly inconsistent.
Errors
The log-file recorded two errors that repeatedly blocked data collection. They did not occur at the same time.
- This error can happen on both websites.
- timeout reached when looking for element ‘xpath=//rt-table-cell[3]/div/span[2]’
- This happens only in the second website.
I am only addressing the second timeout error in this thread, although both together compound the issue.
In operation, sometimes the element is on the page, sometimes an additional couple of clicks in a side-panel are needed to update the table. It doesn’t matter, it can still fail in either scenario. I have tried a different xpath route with the same, inconsistent result.
Only because I was physically watching it did I suspect something was not right. And only by re-running it in v.6.2.8 could I isolate the issue to v.9.3.8. Otherwise I might have falsely concluded the run had successfully completed when in fact lots of entries were missed.
Users should beware of the last sentence.