One of the top issues I find when trying to automate applications is how to test custom controls. I know I’m not the only one; one of my most popular posts is on what to do when UFT doesn’t recognize an object. I believe one of the most overlooked solutions is to actually contact the custom control vendor to ask whether they have a solution to the problem..
In this episode we’ll speak with Michael Germann from Infragistics about custom control automation using IG TestAutomation. Michael will share all kinds of tips for testing unrecognizable objects with UFT and RFT as well as general extensibility best practices for testing custom controls.
About Mike
Michael is currently a Software Development Team Lead for Infragistics Windows Forms UI controls. He has been with Infragistics since 2005, with the majority of that time he was the lead developer for IG TestAutomation, formerly TestAdvantage, for HP UI Testing software. Primarily focusing on supporting all of the new features for the Infragistics Windows Forms controls, but also architecting from the ground up the IG TestAutomation for WPF product line.
Quotes & Insights from this Test Talk
- IG Test Automation is what we use to interact with HP UFT and IBM RFT. We basically build off their extensibility kits and create a product so that it can test our custom controls. Part of what Infragistics does, or actually the bulk of what it does, is create custom UI controls for every different platform, win forms, WPF, ASP Net, Android, iOS, et cetera.
- Some vigorous issues that we come across is just not picking the right version and generally what I am using to debug these issues is process explorer. It’s a simple application you can get from Microsoft just be Googling it. I think it’s only 2Mb, or something like that. It would essentially just replace your task manager and then you could see okay what version do I have actually running in my applications. You’d see all the loaded dlls, and from that okay I have clearly 16.1, or 15.2, or often we’ll have people using much older versions like 7.3, but trying to install 15.2 and wondering why things are going wrong.
- If it’s not testable from a end-user standpoint, from an application, then it’s also probably not functional for that end-user, because the whole concept of the testing is you’re supposed to emulate what an end-user would do as best as you can. If you can’t test it that way, then it’s probably the end user can’t actually use it that way either.
- Internally we do also use Selenium. We did have to actually build our extensibility kit on that as well, or some layer for the Selenium to work.
- From a application development support, usually HP is pretty good with … between HP and our interactions with them, I haven’t seen anything to where the testability of how a developer can end up setting it to would end up blocking that testability.
Resources
Connect with Michael
- Twitter: @infragistics
- Blog: miketechspeak
- Company: Infragistics
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