Limitations

Aug 14, 2017

Limitations of the AppDNA directed spider

The AppDNA directed spider can be run in two modes: automatic and manual. In automatic mode, the AppDNA Directed Spider captures the run-time HTML pages at the point at which they are fully loaded or when the period defined in the Browser timeout setting is reached (whichever is earlier). In automatic mode, the AppDNA directed spider does not capture any modifications that are made to the page after this point.

Automatic mode is therefore not suitable for capturing web applications that rely on JavaScript and related technologies, such as AJAX, to modify pages after they are loaded. For example, some web applications use JavaScript after the page has loaded to fetch results from a database and display them on the page. In automatic mode, the spider does not capture this, because it happens after the page is loaded.

Citrix therefore recommends that you use manual mode for capturing web applications that make significant use of JavaScript and related technologies (such as AJAX) to modify pages after they are loaded. For best results, select the Capture duplicates setting, which allows the same page to be captured more than once when using manual mode and the page has changed by more than a specified threshold.

In addition, the AppDNA directed spider does not close JavaScript-initiated pop-ups, regardless whether the Automatically close dialogs option is selected.

See Web import settings for information about the settings.

File path limit of 260 characters

There is a limit of 260 characters to the length of the fully-qualified file path when generating an MSI. This affects imports on the Web Capture Import tab in the Import Web Applications Screen as well as the stand-alone Web Application Source to MSI Converter.

For example, suppose you want to import some web application source files and the fully-qualified file path to one or more of the source files has more than 260 characters. The import will fail. You can resolve the issue by moving or copying the files to a different location that has a shorter path or by using a mapped drive to shorten the path.

Supported web source file types

AppDNA can import the following web source file types: