Using custom properties to find web objects/elements

Hi Gerhardt,



 >>

We added a "qaid" (quality assurance ID) property, which can be seen with F12 (Tools) in IE or Firebug in Firefox, but not by TestComplete's Object Spy.

<<

Yes, custom attributes aren't displayed in the Object Spy, neither they are displayed on the root level of DOM property inspectors in Firebug and Chrome Developer Tools. This is because they aren't DOM properties. In the Object Spy, as well as in Firebug and Chrome DOM inspectors, you can access custom attributes through the attributes property.



However, in TestComplete scripts, custom attributes can be accessed directly using the dot syntax:

contentPanel.qaid

You can also use custom attributes when searching for objects using the Page.FindChild, Page.NativeWebObject.Find and Page.EvaluateXPath methods, in the same way you would use standard DOM properties like id or innerText.



For example, you can locate your SPAN element by the qaid value in one the following ways:

var contentPanel = this.pageObj.FindChild("qaid", "Site Photograph", 100 /* search depth */);

var contentPanel = this.pageObj.NativeWebObject.Find("qaid", "Site Photograph", "span");

or, using EvaluateXPath:

");

arr = new VBArray(arr).toArray();

var contentPanel = arr[0];

>>

A colleage suggested using EvaluateXPath, so I tried this:

var contentPanel = this.pageObj.EvaluateXPath("//*[@qaid=’Site Photograph’]");



No luck

<<

The EvaluateXPath method returns an array of found objects, even if there's a single object. Also, it's a Variant (VBScript-format) array, so you also need to convert it to a JScript array, like in my example above. Please see the EvaluateXPath method description for details.



I hope this answers your questions!

Hi Helen, thanks very much for the reply!



I have tried both Page.FindChild()  (been using this for many months to find objects by ID), and Page.NativeWebObject.Find(), but none of them find the the object using the custom "qaid" attribute.



EvaluateXPath does find the object, but (after conversion to the JScript array), the object does not expose any attributes / properties. 



In the Locals window, it's simply an [Object] and you can't expand it (see attatchment, i called the object "folder" here).



I can actually find the button I need within the panel / object by using it with FindChild(). So the solution is useable in this case.. 



But having it as a closed object like this is very limiting.  How can I find (or auto cast?) the object in a way that it still exposes it's content? 



(And why would FindChild and NativeWebObject.Find be failing to find anything?)



thanks!

Hi Gerhardt,

>>

I have tried both Page.FindChild()  (been using this for many months to find objects by ID), and Page.NativeWebObject.Find(), but none of them find the the object using the custom "qaid" attribute.

<<

Are you using Google Chrome? I've run some tests and found out that FindChild and NativeWebObject.Find fail to find an object by custom attributes in Chrome indeed, although this works fine in Internet Explorer and Firefox. I've forwarded this to our developers to look into. Thanks for catching this!





>>

EvaluateXPath does find the object, but (after conversion to the JScript array), the object does not expose any attributes / properties. 


In the Locals window, it's simply an [Object] and you can't expand it (see attatchment, i called the object "folder" here).

<<

I'm afraid, I can't reproduce this issue. Could you please post here the exact complete script you're using and the URL of your web page? If you can't post them on a public forum, you can open a support ticket and send them privately to our Support Team.

Does this issue happen only with Chrome or with other browsers as well?

Hi there, the above was of great help. I wanted to ask after finding the object how are we suppose to use the actions like Settext etc. As the intellisense is not showing those options and even if I type it I shows an error. for eg. ojectpath.FindChild.idStr("").SetText("");

Hello



I just noticed that the suggested approach for custom properties works for Firefox but not for Internet Explorer.

I am using TestComplete 10.20 ; ie 10



Thanks

Dana