What is this?

This plugin adds distinctive path attributes to every form elements inside Jenkins so that automated test programs like Selenium can be used more effectively to automate/test Jenkins.

How it works

With this plugin enabled, every control inside a form gets the path attribute. The value of this attribute is something like "/hudson-tasks-ArtifactArchiver/artifacts", and is modeled after XPath.

Configuration pages in Jenkins are assmbled from small pieces that plugins contribute. Furthermore, in general they form a tree structure, and each such fragment can be used multiple times in different context. For example, think of Conditional BuildStep Plugin that allows you to add arbitrary builder as a nested builder inside the "conditional build step" builder.

Because of this reusability of fragments, the id and name attributes cannot be used reliably to point to a specific fragment. That's why we need XPath-like expression.

Find a path that's assigned to element

Use JavaScript DOM inspector in your browser to pick up an INPUT/BUTTON/SELECT elements, and look for the path attribute.

Compatibility

This plugin works with 1.424 and later. When you interact with form and cause DOM changes, you can call recomputeFormElementPath() function from JavaScript to recompute Path to reflect DOM changes.

With Jenkins 1.452 and later, this explicit invocation is unnecessary.

Changelog

Version 1.8 (November 4th, 2016)

• JENKINS-38928: Fix apply button behaviour

Version 1.7 (October 20th, 2016)

• Restore 1.580 support
• JENKINS-37276: Path attributes can change value if reordered

Version 1.6 (July 8th, 2016)

• Requires Jenkins 1.609.3 or later
• Include script.js through adjunct

Version 1.0 (June 22, 2012)

• Initial release