We Keep Coding

Custom Condition for UIA

Is there a way of writing your own System.Windows.Automation.Condition class? I don't know how this class works because it offers no public method to define the comparison behavior.
Background: I use the UIAutomation library to find elements the user interacts with in order to repeat his actions. Sometimes I find it hard to access an element by its properties like the automation id or the name. Recently I found out that the buttons in the Aero bar of Windows 7 change their names to the name of the selected instance and this really strikes me because I cannot use the exact name for a comparison anymore.

You can use inspect.exe to see all available properties of any UI element on screen. That will help you understand which properties are you want to use to identify UI element in various cases.
For instance: I've found that AutomationId property is very useful in some cases when element name is not static.
Also if you want to find element with partial match of it's Name - you can iterate all tree(For instance: via FindAll method) of available element's with TrueCondition and check name matches manually.

Setting up SpecFlow to pass in identifiers

I am new to C# and am trying to use SpecFlow as I used to use Gherkin by giving a unique name to an item and then passing in the name in the Step Definition. My question is about how to add in the identifier when I create an object so I can call the object without having to pass in the actual name of the object every time that I create a step.
So, for instance the code would look something like this:
[When(#"I click the (.*) button")]
public void ClickTheButton(string ButtonName)
{
driver.Click(ButtonName)
//ButtonName would be a string that would call to the ID for the ADD button
}
I want to be able to put in something like "Add" (so the line would read "When I click the ADD button") and then have the code search for the "ADD" identifier.
I know that this is possible in Ruby/Cucumber by using a DOM and then passing in XML with gherkin names. In Ruby/Cucumber the object would look something like this:
<button gherkin_name="ADD" key="id" value="add_button_12685"/>
However, I am finding absolutely no way of doing that in C# with SpecFlow and this is something that I really need to be able to do.
Is there a way to do this at all? All I'm really trying to do is link a handle/parameter name that business users could actually use to a Page Object like you can in Ruby/Cucumber without making the user know the code in the background. And, incidentally, the names of the objects are almost exactly like the gherkin line that I added in, thus they are very weird to have a user write. This is the reason that I'd like to have just an identifier for the user.
Thanks in advance for your help.
EDIT: I realise now I was not clear enough in my original post so perhaps some background will help. I am using Selenium-Webdriver to test a website that has hundreds of items on it. Writing a different step for every single item on every single page would be exceedingly tedious and time consuming. Because there are many of the exact same items with the exact same characteristics (for instance there are something like 50 buttons that all behave similarly on a single page and the site is dozens of pages) on the pages, writing a single method for testing them seems the most logical idea. Identifying these items with an identifier that the business could use would cut down on bulk inside of the Steps, the number of steps written, and the likelihood that the business users would feel comfortable using the code which is the end goal.

You can do what you want if you are using the PageObject pattern and have a property Buttons (probably on a base PageObject class) which exposes the available buttons as a collection (which can be done via reflection) and then you can just do something like:
[When(#"I click the (.*) button")]
public void ClickTheButton(string ButtonName)
{
myPage.Buttons.First(button=>button.Name==ButtonName).Click;
}
but I would take what AutomatedChaos said into consideration and not use this in a step in the gerkin but just have this as a helper method something like this
[When(#"I add a widget")]
public void AddAWidget(string ButtonName)
{
ClickTheButton("Add")
}
private void ClickTheButton(string ButtonName)
{
myPage.Buttons.First(button=>button.Name==ButtonName).Click;
}
your Buttons property doesn't have to be done with reflection, the simplest implementation is something like this:
public IEnumerable<IWebElement> Buttons
{
yield return AddButton;
yield return RemoveButton;
yield return SomeOtherButton;
//etc etc
}
but using reflection will mean that as you add buttons to the page object you don't need to remember to add them to this method, they will be found automatically.

SpecFlow is only the BDD framework. It will not drive browsers itself, you need to install additional packages that drives the browser.
With C#, you have a few options:
Selenium, the best known and works with the Page Object you are accustomed with.
Fluent Automation, an upcoming library that works as a wrapper on top of Selenium, and makes the interfacing easier (more natural language)
CodedUI, Microsofts web and UI test solution that comes natively with Visual Studio Test edition.
On a personal note, I consider Selenium (with or without Fluent Automation) the best fitted to work with SpecFlow (comparisson)
If you want to install Selenium or other packages, you can install the NuGet package manager to easily search, install and update packages for you.
Lastly, have you considered to use more domain specific Gherkin phrases like When I add a Wabberjock instead of When I press the Add button? This is where the power of BDD lies: Exposing the intention while hiding the implementation details.

Save value of custom field type

I am new to SharePoint developement and have a few startup problems which I hope you will help me with.
I am trying to make a custom field type and I am using WPS builder to create the project. Right now I have the following files which are all compiling just fine :)
SuperLookup3.cs
SuperLookup3Control.cs
SuperLookup3FieldEditor.cs
SuperLookup3FieldEditor.ascx (controltemplate)
fldtypes_SuperLookup3.xml (XML)
I have tried look at this example but I just can't get it to work.
My questions
How is the relationsships between the files?
I can see an override of UpdateFieldValueInItem() which is setting the value to the selected item of a dropdown list. But this method is never called (when debugging). How can this be?

Some general advice would be to post this question to the SharePoint Stack Exchange site (if this answer is unsatisfactory), since there are a lot more SharePoint developers there.
From what I understand of that example, it seems to be quite a complex Custom Field Type to start with (given that it has multiple values). There's a good straightforward and pretty well explained tutorial on MSDN that you might want to try out: Walkthrough: Creating a Custom Field Type
Here's a brief explanation of your files (and the classes they contain):
This is the main class of your field, which derives from the SharePoint field base class (SPField). Your naming seems to indicate you're creating a lookup derivative; if so, you may wish to derived from SPFieldLookup.
This is the class the creates the form control displayed on a list item's New, Edit, and Display forms (but not the List View). It's a go-between for the forms and the item's value for this field.
&
This is the section displayed on the Add/Edit Column page. I would expect 3. to have the ending '.ascx.cs' instead of '.cs', since it is the code-behind for 4.; which may be the cause of your problem. This control sets up your field; associating the class in 1. to the list.
This is the field declaration. It says to SharePoint "Hey, I've created my own field; go look here to find it.", and directs SharePoint to the class in 1., which makes the field available on the Add Column page.

Monotouch: send data back down the stack to another ViewController

I have a question concerning Monotouch.
The situation: I have 2 ViewControllers. The first (let's call it VC-A) looks similar to the contacts edit screen, meaning it has a TableView with multiple Sections each containing Buttons and TextFields. Now when the user clicks one of these Buttons, he will get to the second ViewController (VC-B), which displays a TableView containing data from the database. When the user clicks on any of these rows, VC-B will be closed and i want to display the selected database entry (string) as the title of the Button (in VC-A) which opened VC-B in the first place.
When I did an objective-C project last year, I managed to send data back down the stack by using delegates, but I haven't found a way yet how this works in Monotouch.
I have read several questions here on SO about using the AppDelegate or using singletons, but I'm not sure that this is the right way of returning data from a subview.

You can kind of copy the delegate pattern. Add a C# delegate to your VC-B that takes one parameter, some data structure.
In VC-B's "ViewWillDisappear", call the delegate it it is not null and pass the data on to it.
This way, your calling VC can get acces to the data but you don't need tight coupling between the two controllers. All it has to do, is register a delegate-method in VC-B.
As MonoTouch is .NET4 you can use Func<MyDataStructure> or Action<MyDataStructure> and don't need to use full qualified delegate types.

I have a static singleton class that I use to store "state" type data about my app - current settings and selections that are needed in many different places in the app. That's one way to approach this.
You could also pass VC-B a reference to VC-A when you create VC-B, so that it can explicitly access it's parent view and pass back values that way.

I actually prefer to use TinyMessenger for cross container calls I find this to be very very useful when you don't want to keep references to your heavy viewcontrollers around which could potentially result in memory leaks!
var messageHub = new TinyMessengerHub();
// Publishing a message is as simple as calling the "Publish" method.
messageHub.Publish(new MyMessage());
// We can also publish asyncronously if necessary
messageHub.PublishAsync(new MyMessage());
// And we can get a callback when publishing is completed
messageHub.PublishAsync(new MyMessage(), MyCallback);
// MyCallback is executed on completion
https://github.com/grumpydev/TinyMessenger

Dynamic form with no real OOP or objects?

I am tacking a large refactor of a project, and I had asked this question to confirm/understand the direction I should go in and I think I got the answer that I wanted, which is not to throw away years worth of code. So, now begins the challenge of refactoring the code. I've been reading Martine Fowler and Martin Feathers' books, and they have a lot of insight, but I am looking for advice on the ultimate goal of where I want the application to be.
So to reiterate the application a little bit, its a dynamic forms system, with lots of validation logic and data logic between the fields. The main record that gets inserted is the set of form fields that is on the page. Another part of it is 'Actions' that you can do for a person. These 'Actions' can differ client by client, and there are hundreds of 'Actions'. There is also talk that we can somehow make an engine that can eventually take on other similar areas, where a 'person' can be something else (such as student, or employee). So I want to build something very de-coupled. We have one codebase, but different DBs for different clients. The set of form fields on the page are dynamic, but the DB is not - it is translated into the specific DB table via stored procs. So, the generic set of fields are sent to the stored proc and the stored proc then decides what to do with the fields (figure out which table it needs to go to). These tables in fact are pretty static, meaning that they are not really dynamic, and there is a certain structure to it.
What I'm struggling specifically is how to setup a good way to do the dynamic form control page. It seems majority of the logic will be in code on the UI/aspx.cs page, because its loading controls onto the webpage. Is there some way I can do this, so it is done in a streamlined fashion, so the aspx.cs page isn't 5000 lines long? I have a 'FORM' object, and one of the properties is its' 'FIELDS'. So this object is loaded up in the business layer and the Data layer, but now on the fron end, it has to loop through the FIELDS and output the controls onto the page. Also, someway to be able to control the placement would be useful, too - not sure how do get that into this model....
Also, from another point of view - how can I 'really' get this into an object-oriented-structure? Because technically, they can create forms of anything. And those form fields can represent any object. So, for example, today they can create a set of form fields, that represent a 'person' - tomorrow they can create a set of form fields that represent a 'furniture'. How can I possibly translate this to to a person or a furniture object (or should I even be trying to?). And I don't really have controls over the form fields, because they can create whatever....
Any thought process would be really helpful - thanks!

How can I possibly translate this to to a person or a furniture object
(or should I even be trying to?)
If I understand you correctly, you probably shouldn't try to convert these fields to specific objects since the nature of your application is so dynamic. If the stored procedures are capable of figuring out which combination of fields belongs to which tables, then great.
If you can change the DB schema, I would suggest coming up with something much more dynamic. Rather than have a single table for each type of dynamic object, I would create the following schema:
Object {
ID
Name
... (clientID, etc.) ...
}
Property {
ID
ObjectID
Name
DBType (int, string, object-id, etc.)
FormType ( textbox, checkbox, etc.)
[FormValidationRegex] <== optional, could be used by field controls
Value
}
If you can't change the database schema, you can still apply the following to the old system using the stored procedures and fixed tables:
Then when you read in a specific object from the database, you can loop through each of the properties and get the form type and simple add the appropriate generic form type to the page:
foreach(Property p in Object.Properties)
{
switch(p.FormType)
{
case FormType.CheckBox:
PageForm.AddField(new CheckboxFormField(p.Name, p.Value));
break;
case FormType.Email:
PageForm.AddField(new EmailFormField(p.Name, p.Value));
break;
case FormType.etc:
...
break;
}
}
Of course, I threw in a PageForm object, as well as CheckboxFormField and EmailFormField objects. The PageForm object could simply be a placeholder, and the CheckboxFormField and EmailFormField could be UserControls or ServerControls.
I would not recommend trying to control placement. Just list off each field one by one vertically. This is becoming more and more popular anyway, even with static forms who's layout can be controlled completely. Most signup forms, for example, follow this convention.
I hope that helps. If I understood your question wrong, or if you'd like further explanations, let me know.

Not sure I understand the question. But there's two toolboxes suitable for writing generic code. It's generics, and it's reflection - typically in combination.
I don't think I really understand what you're trying to do, but a method using relfection to identify all the properties of an object might look like this:
using System.Reflection;
(...)
public void VisitProperties(object subject)
{
Type subjectType = subject.GetType();
foreach (PropertyInfo info in subjectType.GetProperties()
{
object value = info.GetValue(subject, null);
Console.WriteLine("The name of the property is " + info.Name);
Console.WriteLine("The value is " + value.ToString());
}
}
You can also check out an entry on my blog where I discuss using attributes on objects in conjunction with reflection. It's actually discussing how this can be utilized to write generic UI. Not exactly what you want, but at least the same principles could be used.
http://codepatrol.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/129/
This means that you could create your own custom attributes, or use those that already exists within the .NET framework already, to describe your types. Attributes to specify rules for validation, field label, even field placement could be used.
public class Person
{
[FieldLabel("First name")]
[ValidationRules(Rules.NotEmpty | Rules.OnlyCharacters)]
[FormColumn(1)]
[FormRow(1)]
public string FirstName{get;set;}
[FieldLabel("Last name")]
[ValidationRules(Rules.NotEmpty | Rules.OnlyCharacters)]
[FormColumn(2)]
[FormRow(1)]
public string LastName{get;set;}
}
Then you'd use the method described in my blog to identify these attributes and take the apropriate action - e.g. placing them in the proper row, giving the correct label, and so forth. I won't propose how to solve these things, but at least reflection is a great and simple tool to get descriptive information about an unknown type.

I found xml invaluable for this same situation. You can build an object graph in your code to represent the form easily enough. This object graph can again be loaded/saved from a db easily.
You can turn your object graph into xml & use xslt to generate the html for display. You now also have the benefit of customising this transform for differnetn clients/versions/etc. I also store the xml in the database for performance & to give me a publish function.
You need some specific code to deal with the incoming data, as you're going to be accessing the raw request post. You need to validate the incoming data against what you think you was shown. That stops people spoofing/meddling with your forms.
I hope that all makes sense.