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hrothrock's avatar
hrothrock
Contributor
5 years ago

Using FindChildEx with regexp

I am writing a function to find a child object based on contentText. The items that I have are named similarly, and in my case I have one called "Dispatch 2" and one called "Dispatch 24". If I use te...
  • tristaanogre's avatar
    tristaanogre
    5 years ago

    How's your relationship with the coders?  This is, honestly, what happens when coders write code to just get it done as "elegantly" as possible without considering things further down the pipeline.  They, many times, don't think about what some of their "dynamic" object creation does to automation efforts.

     

    See if they can add an attribute to the objects that is a unique identifier.  You can then use that attribute as the property for your search.

     

    On those lines, that's something else you can look into.  There are properties of onscreen objects that are, themselves, objects with additional properties.  css, attributes, etc., are all accessible via TestComplete and can be utilized for object identification.

tristaanogre's avatar
tristaanogre
Esteemed Contributor
5 years ago

Note that in all of these, you're not actually giving a timeout.  It could be that one of them works but the object is not immediately available at the time you execute FindChildEx.  There are 2 parameters after the depth parameter that include a "refresh tree" (default to false) and a "timeout" (defaults to 0).  You might want to look at this.

 

Also... contentText might not be the best choice of property to check, at least not alone.  Is there an ObjectType property that you can add for additional searching?

 

Also, in this case, the regex systax is the non-native (see https://support.smartbear.com/testcomplete/docs/scripting/regular-expressions.html) so double check what syntax you're using.

  • hrothrock's avatar
    hrothrock
    Contributor
    5 years ago

    I will try adding a timeout. In all the documents I have looked at (including the one you attached) I found the explanations to be very confusing but what I got out of them was that when using the Find methods, I should be using the non-native objects.

     

    There are object types on our objects but they are almost all 'Panel'...

    • tristaanogre's avatar
      tristaanogre
      Esteemed Contributor
      5 years ago

      You can include the "className" property as well.  

       

      Basically, just like NameMapping, the various Find functions are more efficient, more reliable, if you expand the list of properties you're using.  Searching via one property, especially contentText, can bring back more than you want (contentText includes text from the current DIV as well as all DIVs it contains so that's why you're getting some of what you're getting).  So, adding other properties (like className, ObjectType, etc), can help narrow the search parameters.

       

      The first and second parameters of FindChildEx can either be single strings (like you have) or arrays of strings... I'd look into creating arrays and searching that way rather than messing with RegEx, ESPECIALLY since contentText has the problem I've mentioned above.

      • hrothrock's avatar
        hrothrock
        Contributor
        5 years ago

        I have been looking through the properties that are available to me and because of the way the pages are being built I don't have a lot of options as far as using another property. The reason I am using content text at that level is because I need that level to get to the checkbox. If I use class name, all of the objects on the level I am looking at have the same class name, so it will still rely on the content text to be different and it will still find the wrong object unless I use regexp. In addition, other objects on nearby levels have very similar class names, such that I would have to wildcard out the difference because it could be dynamically generated as the page is built. If I use other properties, I am still having to rely on the name on the page, so I will continue running into the need for regexp. I wasn't using the optional parameters in the method because I agreed with the defaults and had no need to change them (to me it looks like the refresh tree default is true). The timeout is not working, and couldn't be the issue because I am working on the code with the page open so there is nothing to wait for.