UI test builder is not tracking UI objects - c#

I am working on UI automation using VS coded UI test builder, is there a way to track control ids from UI? I am getting co-ordinates for input capture windows for controls which is not useful while rerunning test. eg. Mouse.Click(passwordReset, new Point(408, 398)); I did some research on msdn http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd286671.aspx and tried to but nothing seemed to map UI controls without co-ordinates. Please advise.

This should help out a bit. You really want to use SearchProperties which uses the AutomationId (WPF) or Name (WinForms: Name is equivalent of SearchProperty Id and Text is equivalent to SearchProperty Name if my memory serves me right, doesn't make a whole lot of sense). I'm not exactly sure how you do this but we had to go back into our WPF views and add AutomationId's to every control so my coworker could select them when he was setting up automated testing.

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Is it possible to read data from Pane control type?

I've started using FlaUI for Automating my thick client .net application. The application is Windows Form based. The start was good and Login Form was identified and I could Login, but after that came the dead end and I found that almost everything in the application is developed as Pane control type.
So, there is grid, table etc. but they all just appear as Pane type when I see the object hierarchy using Inspect.exe or FLAUInspect tools. And nothing really appears in thier property, so it seems that nothing could be read. But before giving up I just wanted to check with experienced audience on this forum if there is really any way to get the data from Pane objects.
Please suggest if there is any way, even that means using other libraries like UIAutomation, TestStack.White, etc.
UPDATE: I now understand little more about this. So, the objects that are there in the pane are developed in syncfusion and devexpress. Is it possible to identify objects developed in syncfusion and devexpress using FlaUI or UIAutomation or TestStack.White, etc ?
I don't know if you have already tried the following steps. Have you add automationId's to your objects in xaml code with:
AutomationProperties.AutomationId="AnyID"
In the testcode, first initialize the main window of the application.
MainWindow = fApplication.GetMainWindow(fAutomation, null)?.AsWindow()
After that you can find your objects by the automationId's, like:
MainWindow .FindFirstDescendant(cf => cf.ByAutomationId(AnyID))
I did it this way, and don't have to know the hierarchy of my application. Maybe this will work?
Most UI Frameworks nowadays fully support UI Automation. So first make sure that you have a recent version of your framework (syncfusion, devexpress). In addition, some frameworks provide settings to enable UI Automation. Like for devexpress, you need to set
ClearAutomationEventsHelper.IsEnabled = false;
at the start of your application to test so it exposes way more things (like tabs) to FlaUI.

How to identify a winforms button control that has no AutomationId?

I've been tasked to find out how to implement UI automation for desktop apps with appium-dotnet-driver. I've successfully managed to use the windows calculator app for UI unit testing.
That being said, having a lot of trouble with my company's winforms app because some elements either don't have an AutomationId or it changes every time something is clicked on the program.
Is there an easy way to define the AutomationId for a control type (i.e. Button)?
Solved by setting the Name property of relevant controls. AutomationId is automatically inferred from Name or Text properties. Hope it helps someone.

How to detect window content change in WPF?

I want to develop a tool for test automation.
I have source code of the application under test, so I have the privilege to add some custom logic inside the app.
One part of the custom logic is to detect the content change, analyze the change and finally report the result outside to the test tool, such as: a message "the login window is ready" followed by locations of user_id and password control.
By using VisualTreeHelper and LogicalTreeHelper class, I can know the current status of the window, but I do not know WHEN to walk through the tree.
I found a similar question but this is for 3rd party window, I guess there may be better solution for app that I have access to source code.
In win32, I can hook WM_PAINT to detect window content change.
Do you have any hint about how to do this in WPF?
By the way, although I would like to add custom logic to the app, I also want to change the app logic as little as possible.
I am new to WPF, sorry if anything totally wrong.
You might want to specify exactly what you want to achieve, like describing an examlpe of what you want to do.
Are you aware of the VisualTreeHelper class? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.ui.xaml.media.visualtreehelper
Based on what you said you wanted to achieve. I would probably subscribe to some "ready" or "loaded" event of a UI element. You should be able to get access to the UI element through the VisualTreeHelper.
You should also be able to interact with the UI elements through it, eg. click and enter information. And you could also run tests based on the state of the UI (I think).
I'm also sure there are plenty of Automated UI Testing frameworks for WPF, just Google: "automated UI Testing frameworks for WPF".
Hope this helps.

Coded UI :How to select element from list which get closed when we select crosshair tool from Test builder

While automating my application i came across certain button/ drop-down list,When i click on that list items get displayed.
I'm trying to capture these list items using coded Ui test builder , but if i click crosshair icon then list will be closed.
I also tried to capture using WindowsLogo+i as it show on tool tip, but it will open setting window. (Windows 10)
so, Is there any why i can capture these type of elements ?
or can suggest code to select Item using Name property.
There are a few things you can do.
In coded ui, you can inspect something at a higher level and use the navigation arrows to move around the actual inspected element. Up arrow goes to container element. Down element goes to child. Left and right are for siblings. Typically, you can use this to move around the UI element tree.
There is the inspect tool you can use from Microsoft.
Not sure if it changed, but you used to be able to place your mouse over an element and press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + i and it would inspect whatever was under the mouse. Since it does not require clicking something else, it should not close your menu you are trying to inspect.
Per the comments above, I would recommend not using the test recorder at all and manually write your scripts instead.
Depending on how much you want to rely on another framework, you can choose a variety of options.
CodedUIExamples.com shows one way to do it which is 100% extension methods over coded ui and is completely interchangable with Coded UI (not bound to classes provided by the framework, only Coded UI). I wrote this set of extensions.
Another great option is Coded UI Test Extension (CUITe) framework which does introduce a new set of classes to program against, but the programming model is much more intuitive.
White also has a better programming model similar to the first recommendation.
Overall, writing the scripts yourself is going to lead to more maintainable and re-usable components and is not difficult at all.

Kind of live debugging possible? (Especially UI manipulation)

I would like to know if there is a way to manipulate an App's UI live while running?
I am not a designer and I have many problems sometimes regarding matching colours etc.
The next problem is that anytime I would like to change e.g. the colour of a control I have to quit the App then go to VS2012, apply my changes, build and execute it again to see simple changes.
I know that I see any changes in the designer but I have to see the resulting screen to get an impression of the whole.
Is there a way to achieve this?
Add a secret keypress while Debug flag is set, that raises a form and allows you to select controls and expose a property sheet for them. Be a bit of work to get right, and a good stick of code even using reflection. Might be better off with a storyboard type app to do your designing.
Unlike styles in WPF which can be dynamically adjusted (which made this type of run-time adjustment simple), there isn't as elegant of a solution for Windows Store apps. Ideally, you'd have all of your UI and colors, etc. defined in XAML files and not settable through other means (as it becomes a longer term maintenance issue).
I'd suggest just adding enough test data and configuration so that you can see the look and feel of the pages (with colors, etc.) at design-time. Blend and Visual Studio are now quite good at showing a very reasonable near final rendering of the elements of the application. It's generally not too difficult to do anymore.
One thing I've done in the past was to make a single page/form that contained all of the styles and controls in a large scroll viewer. Then, we set it so it was configurable to the be the first thing to run. The tweak/build cycle was pretty fast, and the results were still very manageable.

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