Forum Discussion

Colin_McCrae's avatar
Colin_McCrae
Community Hero
10 years ago

Delphi popup menu?

Hi   I'm having a bit of bother with popup menu objects which are spawned by right clicking on TTreeView menu object options.   The popup menu objects are transient. As soon as you move elsewhere...
  • Colin_McCrae's avatar
    Colin_McCrae
    10 years ago

    ** FINAL UPDATE **

     

    OK. I have it working now.

     

    Was not able to use the index. Even with three levels of menu open (all of type "Popup") they all report an index of 1 and it always finds the first level container? No idea why. But thats what was happening.

     

    So, I ended up using the "Name" property. As each new level container is spawned, it's name appears to be dynamically generated based on the selection prior to it. With the first level always having the name "Context".

     

    So to find each level, I search for a container of type "Popup" with "Name" properties of:

     

    Level 1 - ["Popup"]("Context") - pre-populated

    Level 2 - ["Popup"]("Level 1 selection text") - Selection text based on the user input

    Level 3 - ["Popup"]("Level 2 selextion text") - Same as above ...

     

    And so on. For as few or many levels deep as requirted. (It's in a loop obviously) As it finds each new container, finding the MenuItem within that is simple. It hovers each one until the end and clicks on the final one if it gets through without any errors.

     

    The containers are all direct children of the top level process so it doesn't have to search too deep. Each container then only contains a handful of MenuItem object to search through. So the speed remains good.

     

    As each component is searched out and identified before it is used, I can validate as I go and and failed object searches will be picked up and generate the required error messages. (This is all data driven so needs to be robust in case people feed it garbage)

     

    Very convoluted way of getting there. But got there in the end.

Colin_McCrae's avatar
Colin_McCrae
Community Hero

Update ...

 

Found this thread:

 

http://community.smartbear.com/t5/Getting-Started-with/Work-with-Windows-PopupMenu-in-Windows-7-and-XP/td-p/55128/page/2

 

... which gets me so far. I can get a True/False if I put the text object capture between the right click on the TTreeView menu, and the selection of the PopUpMenu option.

 

BUT!

 

This only allows me to validate the first level of menu options. Some of the popup menus go several levels deep. This doesn't seem to help me here for two reasons:

 

1. When initially triggering the popup menu with a right click on the tree view, it only opens to the first level. Subsequent levels only open by hovering over menu options.

2. If I open it several levels deep using the CTRL+SHIFT+A object spy method, I do get a text object back. But it only shows the final selection. It doesn't show the full menu path to get there.

 

Any further suggestions welcome ....

AlexKaras's avatar
AlexKaras
Champion Level 3
10 years ago

Hi Colin,

 

Just a quick idea: as you can get the text of the currently selected menu item, what if you try to 'manually' navigate through the menu?

I.e. something like this:

-- Open the menu using right-click;

-- Search for the first item in your menu path in the opened menu;

-- If the menu item was found, hover mouse over it (via the .HoverMouse() method);

-- Search for the subsequent sub-menu window;

-- If the sub-menu window was found, search for the second item from the menu path, hover the mouse over it and so on until all path is verified.

  • Colin_McCrae's avatar
    Colin_McCrae
    Community Hero
    10 years ago

    Hi Alex

     

    Thanks for the input.

     

    Thats pretty much what I've been trying to do. And it finds the first level menu item no problem. But, so far, it always fails to find the second one. No idea why. The search criteria are correct (object type of MenuItem and it's caption). I have "sys.refresh" in all the relevant places place. I've tried adding delays. But they're never found.

     

    Which is odd. As the object info I get from spying them implies they should be.

     

    (I've also tried recording using them and the recorded object fit in with the object spy info .... most confusing)

     

    I'll keep prodding it and update if I have a eureka moment!

    • Colin_McCrae's avatar
      Colin_McCrae
      Community Hero
      10 years ago

      I think I know why it's not finding them.

       

      Each time it opens a new level of menu, it sees the container for the new level as a separate popup.

       

      So rather than it seeing:

       

      Application

      > Popup

      >> Options Level 1

      >>> Options Level 2

       

      etc

       

      What it sees is:

       

      Application

      > Popup

      >> Level 1 Menu

      > Popup

      >> Level 2 Menu

       

      etc.

       

      So when I've been telling it to search the popup, it only ever searches the first one. I need to move it onto the second one. Which I'll have to do by index I guess as the content is dynamic and variable so not something I can reliably map. (I have the popup as a mapped object at the moment. I'm going to switch it to a dynamic object that gets updated as it moves through the menu layers ...)

       

      ** UPDATE **

       

      Yup.

       

      Thats whats happening.

       

      I was searching for object within the (mapped) popup. If I search from the top level of the application, it finds the second level options (within the second popup instance). But it's horribly slow as it's searching so much. Will switch it to using the mapped object with a variable index which should speed things up.

       

      ** ADDITIONAL UPDATE **

       

      The reason I didn't realise it was creating a new popup for each level was that when I recorded it, it attached all the child MenuItem object to the same parent popup as it obviously couldn't tell them apart either! Thats what threw me on the wrong track of thinking they were all child objects of the same parent popup. Their transient nature makes stuff like that tricky to spot!

      • Colin_McCrae's avatar
        Colin_McCrae
        Community Hero
        10 years ago

        ** FINAL UPDATE **

         

        OK. I have it working now.

         

        Was not able to use the index. Even with three levels of menu open (all of type "Popup") they all report an index of 1 and it always finds the first level container? No idea why. But thats what was happening.

         

        So, I ended up using the "Name" property. As each new level container is spawned, it's name appears to be dynamically generated based on the selection prior to it. With the first level always having the name "Context".

         

        So to find each level, I search for a container of type "Popup" with "Name" properties of:

         

        Level 1 - ["Popup"]("Context") - pre-populated

        Level 2 - ["Popup"]("Level 1 selection text") - Selection text based on the user input

        Level 3 - ["Popup"]("Level 2 selextion text") - Same as above ...

         

        And so on. For as few or many levels deep as requirted. (It's in a loop obviously) As it finds each new container, finding the MenuItem within that is simple. It hovers each one until the end and clicks on the final one if it gets through without any errors.

         

        The containers are all direct children of the top level process so it doesn't have to search too deep. Each container then only contains a handful of MenuItem object to search through. So the speed remains good.

         

        As each component is searched out and identified before it is used, I can validate as I go and and failed object searches will be picked up and generate the required error messages. (This is all data driven so needs to be robust in case people feed it garbage)

         

        Very convoluted way of getting there. But got there in the end.