how keepass matches keys to websites

[citizen_snips]

I am just getting started with Keepass and am having trouble understanding how Keepass matches key entries to websites for the autotype feature.  I understand that it is supposed to match the title of the website against the name of the key. 

I wanted to make a key for my ebay account, so I saved the login and password under a key named "Welcome to eBay - Sign in".  This is the exact text that is displayed in the title if you go here:

https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn&UsingSSL=1&pUserId=&co_partnerId=2&siteid=0&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi5.ebay.com%2Fws2%2FeBayISAPI.dll%3FSellItem%26hm%3Dnu.rundkoi34%253E%26%26hc%3D1%26guest%3D1%26userid%3D&pageType=1144

If I go to the site and press CTRL + ALT + A, nothing happens.  Why?  The key name exactly matches the page title.  My other keys work with autotype, so I know it's not a general problem with Keepass.

If I then change the key name from "Welcome to eBay - Sign in" to simply "ebay", autotype works just fine.  Why?  How is "ebay" a closer match to the exact title page than "Welcome to eBay - Sign in"?

Additionally, if I name the key "Welcome to eBay - Sign in" but then go to Auto-Type -> Use custom sequences for specific windows -> (select the ebay window from the pulldown menu) -> Keystroke Sequence: default, and set a customized window/sequence association, I am able to login to ebay just fine.  Why?

Finally, I will add that when I tried to setup my Yahoo mail account with Keepass, I initially named the key "Yahoo mail", and autotype didn't work.  When I named the key the exact name of the login page, autotype worked.

I seem to be missing something here.  Can someone please explain these discrepancies to me?

Thanks

[Paul]

KeePass matches the entry title by pre-pending and appending an asterisk - *ebay*. This will match any window title with the word "ebay" in it. You can also set the target window manually and use an asterisk or the full window title.

When I go to ebay i get "Welcome to eBay - Sign in - Mozilla Firefox", so I would either need a KeePass entry called "ebay" or a target window of "Welcome to eBay - Sign in*".

cheers, Paul

[citizen_snips]

KeePass matches the entry title by pre-pending and appending an asterisk - *ebay*. This will match any window title with the word "ebay" in it.

Thanks, but this still doesn't explain why it wouldn't match my key name of "Welcome to eBay - Sign in" to the window title of "Welcome to eBay - Sign in - Windows Internet Explorer".  It seems to me that *Welcome to eBay - Sign in* should match "Welcome to eBay - Sign in - Windows Internet Explorer".  Could you please clarify this point?

You can also set the target window manually and use an asterisk or the full window title.

So when you set the target window manually Keepass doesn't add the * to the beginning and end of the target window name entry by default, but when you name the key yourself, it does?

[Paul]

If KeePass hasn't matched the title you have something incorrect. Try using the window selector from the Tools button when editing the entry. This will show you the correct characters.

If you set the target window filter KeePass uses the filter as is. It always uses the title as described.

cheers, Paul

[citizen_snips]

OK, I figured it out, but I had to use a hex editor.  pail459 is correct - when it comes to matching the name of a key to the title of a website, Keepass will put wildcards on either end of the name of the key and attempt to match it to the title of the website.  In my example above, the key title "Welcome to eBay - Sign in" would be matched to the page title as *Welcome to eBay - Sign in*.

I noticed that if I copied the text "Welcome to eBay - Sign in" from the page title of the "Target Window" pulldown menu and used it as the name of the key, it would correctly match to the eBay sign in page.  Yet if I manually typed in what I thought was that exact same text, it wouldn't match.

It turns out that the spaces between the hyphen are actually non-breaking space characters (hex code 0xA0) as opposed to standard spaces (hex code 0x20).  They behave differently in HTML, but look identical in any text box.  I had to copy the text from the "Target Window" pulldown menu, paste it into a text file, and open that text file in a hex editor to notice this.

In conclusion, my advice would be:

1. Use a very simple name for the key itself, such as "ebay", and then use the "custom sequences for specific windows" option to specify exact page titles.

2. Capture the exact page title from the pulldown menu in the "custom sequences for specific windows" section, and use that text as the key title.

I hope someone else finds this information useful.  It was very confusing as to why my string wasn't matching.