Tutorial: Filling a Form End-to-End

This tutorial walks through a realistic Vibium session: open a search engine, type a query, submit the form, and capture the result. It exercises navigation, mapping, semantic finding, form filling, waiting, and screenshots.

We’ll use https://duckduckgo.com as the target. Any search engine will work; just adjust the labels.

If you have Vibium installed globally, the examples run as written. If you’d rather stay zero-install, run the same commands through npx:

npx -y vibium go https://duckduckgo.com
npx -y vibium find placeholder "Search privately"
# ...etc.

Or alias for the session:

alias vibium='npx -y vibium'

1. Open the page

vibium go https://duckduckgo.com

Vibium starts the browser if it isn’t already running and navigates to the URL.

2. Find the search input

There are two equally good ways to locate the search box:

# By placeholder text
vibium find placeholder "Search privately"

# Or by ARIA role
vibium find role combobox

Either returns a reference like @e1.

You could also call vibium map to list every interactive element on the page and pick a reference manually.

3. Fill the input and submit

vibium fill @e1 "vibium browser automation"
vibium press Enter

press sends a literal key event, which is the simplest way to submit a form that reacts to Enter.

The @eN reference comes from the most recent find or map output. If the page navigates or re-renders, run find or map again before reusing it.

4. Wait for the results

The page transitions are asynchronous, so wait for something result-shaped to appear before continuing. Any of these works:

vibium wait text "vibium"
vibium wait "h2"

5. Read and capture

vibium text > results.txt
vibium screenshot -o results.png

6. Record the whole session (optional)

If you want a replay of the whole interaction, wrap it in a recording. Run the steps individually so each find result is visible before you act on its reference:

vibium record start
vibium go https://duckduckgo.com
vibium find placeholder "Search privately"   # note the @eN it returns, e.g. @e1
vibium fill @e1 "vibium"
vibium press Enter
vibium wait text "vibium"
vibium record stop   # writes record.zip

record.zip contains the captured screenshots and is convenient for sharing failures, debugging tests, attaching to a bug report, or playing back in the Vibium Record Player.

What you just learned

• Drive a real browser with one command per step.
• Locate elements semantically (find), not with CSS selectors.
• Reference elements by stable @eN IDs.
• Fill, press, wait, and capture without juggling drivers.

Next up: read the Core Concepts page to understand how mapping and references work under the hood, then dive into the Command Reference for every flag.