Lessons I learned in Software Testing

SandeepMathew — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:23:35 GMT

Writing a good test case requires pragmatism and skill . I am not claiming that I am a good tester yet , but I made many mistakes . These are some of the mistakes I made which helped me learn a lot about software . A test engineers job actually requires both technical and political skills . Although political skill are not taken into consideration they are quite important . Developers tend to believe that they have done everything correctly and since they wrote the original code , it is quite difficult to obtain the same about knowledge about the code as they have . You will have a hard time convincing people “ your point of view “ . One of the biggest mistakes I made was to try the edge scenarios first than the primary ones . Although it seems easy at first , it requires some attention and focus to execute . We should and must execute the primary scenarios first than the edge scenarios .

Some documentation is always better than no documentation at all . It is better to have a precise document explaining what is to be done even before the test execution begins . Another challenge is to execute the documented steps in a meticulous manner so that you can reproduce and track the bugs accurately . Once you find the bug it is very important to describe the bug in a proper manner . That requires good communication skill both written and verbal .

Test automation saves time and I believe whatever that can be automated within the time allocated should be automated , well written automation scripts save time and reduce frustration . The challenge with automation is that it quite impossible to inject a human brain into a computer program . There are certain things humans do well than computers without much difficulty . You might face issues with timing and synchronization. It is ideal to do automation when UI and features are quite stabilized otherwise we may need to change our code pretty often and waste a lot of time where we could have used that time for testing the software / product under consideration .

Gaining respect as a tester is also quite challenging , test requires a different sort of skill , not everyone is gifted with that kind of skill ( I myself is pretty bad in this respect ) . But I believe all skills can be mastered with hard work and patience . Tester’s generally do not have deep granular level knowledge of the product as that of a developer , but they know how things are supposed to work . Developers consider therefore testers as “less technical “ mortals . But the real world fact is that technically superior products may not be very successful in the market . I am developer myself by heart and have developed compilers , operating systems , games , emulators , graphics libraries and so forth ( I am a MCPD too :) ) , I believe my experience as a tester will make me a better developer . The path I am trying to pursue is to gain more knowledge and improve my communication skill so that I can gain more respect .

I aspire to be an awesome developer and testing is an integral part of development . That’s all for now , more musings at a later point of time

Automation With Windows UI Automation

SandeepMathew — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:24:00 GMT

UIA shipped with .Net 3.0 did not receive the attention it really deserves . UIA can be used to automate native windows applications , WPF applications as well as Silverlight applications . There are two things one must consider when automating

Reference to the Automation Element
The user pattern to be invoked

That's all . The AutomationElement.RootElement represents the desktop , all other UI elements are children of the desktop . We need to search the tree to find the required automation element . The tree hierarchy can be found by a tool called UISpy that comes as a part of Windows SDK . Then we need to determine what pattern is to be used , eg combobox uses ExpandCollapse Pattern , textbox uses TextPattern and button uses Invoke pattern . (MSDN has all information )

Lets see how its done using 2 simple automation actions

Action 1 : Opening notepad and putting some junk text in it

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Windows.Automation;
using System.Windows.Automation.Provider;
using System.Windows.Automation.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace AutomateNotepad
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Make sure that all notepad process are killed

            Process[] notepadProcceses = Process.GetProcessesByName("notepad");
            foreach (Process notepadProc in notepadProcceses)
            {
                notepadProc.Kill(); 
            }
            // Start a notepad window  
            Process notepadProcces = Process.Start("notepad"); 
            // Get the reference to the notepad window
            AutomationElement notepadWindow = AutomationElement.RootElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants , new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ClassNameProperty,"Notepad")) ; 
            // Get the reference to the notepad text box
            AutomationElement notepadTextBox = AutomationElement.RootElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ClassNameProperty, "Edit"));
            TextPattern putText = notepadTextBox.GetCurrentPattern(TextPattern.Pattern) as TextPattern;
            putText.DocumentRange.Select();
            SendKeys.SendWait(" You  there ! why are you  looking at me !");
            Console.ReadKey(); 
        }
    }
}

Action 2 : Walk through all the elements in a Silverlight page

The XAML file of the Silverlight page is as follows

<UserControl x:Class="SilverlightTestPage.Page"
    xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 
    xmlns:x="https://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 
    Width="400" Height="300" xmlns:System="clr-namespace:System;assembly=mscorlib">
    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

     <Rectangle Height="51" VerticalAlignment="Top" Fill="#FF0F36E2" Stroke="#FF000000"/>
     <Rectangle Height="2" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,0,8,0" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="0" Fill="#FF0F36E2" Stroke="#FF000000"/>
     <TextBlock Height="32" Margin="53,8,126,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Text="Automation Demo" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>
     <Grid HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,51,0,0" Width="80" Background="#FF904F4F">
      <Button x:Name="myButton1" Background="#FF339529" Height="40" Margin="8,27,8,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Content="Click Me " Click="myButton1_Click">
       <Button.BorderBrush>
        <LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" StartPoint="0.5,0">
         <GradientStop Color="#FFA3AEB9"/>
         <GradientStop Color="#FF8399A9" Offset="0.375"/>
         <GradientStop Color="#FF718597" Offset="0.375"/>
         <GradientStop Color="#FF4DACF3" Offset="1"/>
        LinearGradientBrush>
       Button.BorderBrush>
      Button>
     Grid>
     <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,134,0,147" Width="80" Text="ComboBox1" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>
     <ComboBox x:Name="myCombo1"   Height="19" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,0,0,114" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="72">
      <System:String>String1System:String>
      <System:String>String2System:String>
     ComboBox>
     <CheckBox x:Name="myCheck1" Height="19" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,0,0,61" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="20" Content="CheckBox"/>
     <TextBlock Height="26" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,0,0,84" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="72" Text="Checkbox1" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>
     <RadioButton x:Name="myRadio1" Height="15" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="112,91,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="17" Content="RadioButton"/>
     <TextBlock Height="21" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="93,66,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="84" Text="radiobutton1" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>
     <TextBox x:Name="myTextBox1" Margin="102,134,126,132" Text="Put Some Text Here" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>
     <TextBlock x:Name="myTextBlock1" Height="45" Margin="112,0,51,39" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Text="TextBlock" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>

    Grid>
UserControl>

The code for automating it is as follows

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Windows.Automation;
using System.Windows.Automation.Provider;
using System.Windows.Automation.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;
namespace WindowsUIAutomationDemo
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Start the internet explorer process
            Process p = Process.Start("iexplore");
            Thread.Sleep(10000);
            // Get the handle to the ieWindow
            AutomationElement ieWindow = AutomationElement.RootElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ClassNameProperty,"IEFrame"));
            Thread.Sleep(5000);
            
            if (ieWindow == null)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Unable to get handle to the ie main window!");

            }
            else
            {
                Thread.Sleep(5000);
                // Specify the condition for getting a reference to the edit control
                Condition[] condition = new Condition[3];
                condition[0] = new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ClassNameProperty, "Edit");
                condition[1] = new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ControlTypeProperty, ControlType.Edit);
                condition[2] = new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.NameProperty, "Address");

                // Getting a reference to the iebar
                AutomationElement iebar = ieWindow.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new AndCondition(condition));

                if (iebar == null)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Unable to get handle to the window !");

                }
                else
                {
                    // Set focus and go to the address
                    iebar.SetFocus();
                    SendKeys.SendWait(@"E:\WindowsUIAutomationDemo\SilverlightTestPage\SilverlightTestPage\Bin\Debug\TestPage.html");
                    SendKeys.SendWait("{Enter}");
                    Thread.Sleep(20000);


                    // Get the reference to the silverlight control 
                    AutomationElement silverlightElement = ieWindow.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ClassNameProperty, "MicrosoftSilverlight"));
                    if (silverlightElement == null)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine("Unable to get access to silverligt contorl");

                    }
                    else
                    {
                        // click the click me button
                        AutomationElement clickButton = silverlightElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty, "myButton1"));
                        InvokePattern invokePattern = clickButton.GetCurrentPattern(InvokePattern.Pattern) as InvokePattern;
                        invokePattern.Invoke();

                        Thread.Sleep(2000);
                        // Expand combo box
                        AutomationElement comboBox = silverlightElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty, "myCombo1"));
                        ExpandCollapsePattern expandCollapsePattern = comboBox.GetCurrentPattern(ExpandCollapsePattern.Pattern)  as ExpandCollapsePattern;
                        expandCollapsePattern.Expand();
                        
                        Thread.Sleep(2000)  ;
                        
                        // Selct the first item 
                        AutomationElement firstItemincombo = silverlightElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.NameProperty, "String1"));
                        SelectionItemPattern itemSelection = firstItemincombo.GetCurrentPattern(SelectionItemPattern.Pattern) as SelectionItemPattern;
                        itemSelection.Select();
                        Thread.Sleep(1000) ; 
                        expandCollapsePattern.Collapse();
                        

                        //Get the radio checkbox
                        AutomationElement checkboxPattern = silverlightElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty, "myCheck1"));
                        TogglePattern tooglePattern = checkboxPattern.GetCurrentPattern(TogglePattern.Pattern) as TogglePattern;
                        tooglePattern.Toggle(); 
                        Thread.Sleep(1000) ; 

                        // Get the radio button 

                        AutomationElement radioButton = silverlightElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants,new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty,"myRadio1"));
                        SelectionItemPattern radioCheck =radioButton.GetCurrentPattern(SelectionItemPattern.Pattern) as 
                            SelectionItemPattern;


                        radioCheck.Select(); 
                        Thread.Sleep(1000) ; 

                        // Get the textbox and put something there 

                        AutomationElement textBox = silverlightElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants,new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty,"myTextBox1"));
                        ValuePattern valuePattern = textBox.GetCurrentPattern(ValuePattern.Pattern) as ValuePattern;
                        valuePattern.SetValue("Yo yo , i am entering text !"); 
                        
                      
                        Thread.Sleep(1000); 
                    }

                    
                    //AutomationElement silverlightControl = ieWindow.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants,new PropertyCondition(

                }
            }
            Console.ReadKey();
          
        }
    }
}

Musings about os development , assembly language , game development , compiler development , software testing and software engineering

Lessons I learned in Software Testing

Automation With Windows UI Automation