Forum Discussion

Novari-QA's avatar
Novari-QA
Frequent Contributor
7 years ago

How to avoid Extended Find?

It is a cool feature and all, however the extended find feature is being forced on. I point to an object on the screen that I want to find. It turns on extended find and it takes about 5 seconds to find that object. 


I have a form with about 10-15 text box elements.  To fill in that data it takes test complete about 1-2min. Just to put text into text boxes.   I have a strong feeling that this is due to extended find.  Could someone help?

  • tristaanogre's avatar
    tristaanogre
    7 years ago

    You are correct.  Extended find is a VERY useful feature.  There are certain situations where the contents on the page have some dynamic parent elements (like tables where the row count shifts but the component you want to work with is still present and so the cells aren't static) and that feature comes in VERY handy.  However, it is not a feature that I like to use unless I find it absolutely necessary... as you've discovered, Extended Find does exactly what it says... it "finds" components meaning there is a search algorithm being executed.

     

    So... a couple of notes about Extended Find.

     

    First, as you noted, by default, TestComplete "forces" you to use Extended Find.  This can be turned off.  Under Tools | Options | Engines | NameMapping there is an option that says, "Use extended find when possible" (see screenshot).

     

     

    If you turn off this flag, it turns off that automatic "force" of using extended find.  This does not mean that using extended find is no longer an option, just that TestComplete doesn't automatically apply it.

     

    Secondly, you can turn on or off extended find on components at will.  You may have already discovered this.  But if you open your mapping item and pan right on the mapped objects, there is a column for each mapped object with a checkbox for extended find

     

     

    So, individually, you can turn on or off this option.  Turning it on is easy.  Turning it off means that you will need to map some additional objects in the ancestry of the object. In my example above, I would need to map objects from the browser object to include all ancestor objects of linkReports if I wanted to turn off that flag.  

     

    Hope this helps.

  • tristaanogre's avatar
    tristaanogre
    Esteemed Contributor
    7 years ago

    You are correct.  Extended find is a VERY useful feature.  There are certain situations where the contents on the page have some dynamic parent elements (like tables where the row count shifts but the component you want to work with is still present and so the cells aren't static) and that feature comes in VERY handy.  However, it is not a feature that I like to use unless I find it absolutely necessary... as you've discovered, Extended Find does exactly what it says... it "finds" components meaning there is a search algorithm being executed.

     

    So... a couple of notes about Extended Find.

     

    First, as you noted, by default, TestComplete "forces" you to use Extended Find.  This can be turned off.  Under Tools | Options | Engines | NameMapping there is an option that says, "Use extended find when possible" (see screenshot).

     

     

    If you turn off this flag, it turns off that automatic "force" of using extended find.  This does not mean that using extended find is no longer an option, just that TestComplete doesn't automatically apply it.

     

    Secondly, you can turn on or off extended find on components at will.  You may have already discovered this.  But if you open your mapping item and pan right on the mapped objects, there is a column for each mapped object with a checkbox for extended find

     

     

    So, individually, you can turn on or off this option.  Turning it on is easy.  Turning it off means that you will need to map some additional objects in the ancestry of the object. In my example above, I would need to map objects from the browser object to include all ancestor objects of linkReports if I wanted to turn off that flag.  

     

    Hope this helps.