Use Cases, Strengths, and Limitations

• Use Case Patterns
• API and Network Requests
• Page Modification
• Triggers
• Web Automation
• Selectors
• Scripting and Custom Code
• Control Flow and Exceptions
• Team Databases
• Inline Frames (IFrames)

Use Case Patterns

• Web Clipping: send context and user input to apps/services
• Invoke RPA bot
• Record/ticket creation
• Template auto-fill
• Collaboration: one- and two-way communication in context
• Send to chat app
• Task queues
• Web annotation
• Heads up Display: show information from other sources in context
• Table aggregation
• Reference data
• Status display
• Decision trees
• Translation/currency conversion
• Conditional Authority: modify, monitor, and warn for compliance
• Audit/action logs
• Hide/disable features
• Keyword detection
• Process gates

API and Network Requests

• Call JSON-based APIs. XML-based API payloads are not supported
• Supports API Key, Token, and OAuth2 authentication
• Headers are supported in requests. Response headers are not made available
• Non-2XX responses raise an error. The status from responses is not made available
• PixieBrix does not currently support automatically retrying failed requests

Page Modification

• Support for highlighting, hiding/showing, enabling/disabling elements
• PixieBrix can add a button to a menu. PixieBrix does not currently support adding multiple buttons, e.g., to each element of a list or row of a table
• Page modification works at the element-level. PixieBrix does not currently support modifying words within a paragraph/text node.

Triggers

• Support for standard web events (click, hover) and events for web extensibility: appear/initialize
• PixieBrix supports a watch mode for automatically attaching triggers as elements are added to the page
• Cannot remove native event handlers from the host application
• Cannot add click handlers to buttons (e.g., submit) that redirect the page because the page navigates before PixieBrix has a opportunity to run the trigger

Web Automation

• PixieBrix can simulate web events and set form/input values. The different input types are handled automatically
• In rare cases, some features on pages cannot be automated because they only respond to Trusted Events (events that are performed by a user or OS-level automation instead of a script)

Selectors

• PixieBrix supports the JQuery superset of CSS selectors
• The Page Editor automatically infers selectors for an element
• In some cases, the Page Editor cannot automatically infer a robust selector, so you will need to manually adjust the selector

Scripting and Custom Code

• Write custom data transformation logic in text templates (see
  📘

  Text Template Guide
  ) and JQ, the JSON processor
• For security, PixieBrix does not support running custom JavaScript in the browser
• To script business logic in a language of your choice, deploy the logic to an API (e.g., using AWS Lambda) and call the API

Control Flow and Exceptions

• You can configure a condition for each brick
• There is currently no if/else/switch constructs. These can be simulated by repeating individual brick conditions
• PixieBrix supports cancelling the current action or raising a business error. PixieBrix does not currently support try-catch control flow
• PixieBrix does not currently support loops. You cannot execute a brick per element. There are two alternatives that work in many situations:
• For data transformation, use text templates and/or JQ to map the data. (See Scripting and Custom Code above)
• Use a Trigger that triggers for each element on the page that matches a selector. Currently: appear and initialize

Team Databases

• Key-value/document store
• Support for JSON Schema enforcement. See
  🐘

  Team Databases
• Supports simple data queries. Does not support complex logic in filters, e.g., OR/NOT/etc. See
  📡

  Developer API
  for the filter API
• Cannot enforce Foreign Keys across databases
• Does not support database transactions
• Does not support indexing
• To use a full-featured database, expose database calls via an API (e.g., using AWS Lambda)

Inline Frames (IFrames)

• The Page Editor can only edit the top-level frame of a page
• To edit an inline frame, open the tab in a new frame
• Some frame content does not support running in its own tab. Therefore, you cannot use the point-and-click tools and Page Editor debugging while editing them
• See
  🖼️

  Editing pages with iframes
  for more details