Answer Posted / ajreddy

Descriptive programming in QTP
Author(s): (1) tarun_lalwani
Written On: 15-Sep-2005
Keywords:
QTP, Quick Test, Quick Test Pro, Descriptive Programming,
Programming Description
Introduction:
This document demonstrates the usage of Descriptive
programming in QTP 8.20. It also discusses situations where
Descriptive programming can be used. Using Descriptive
Programming automation scripts can be created even if the
application has not been developed.
Descriptive Programming:
Whenever QTP records any action on any object of an
application, it adds some description on how to recognize
that object to a repository of objects called object
repository. QTP cannot take action on an object until unless
its object description is in the Object Repository. But
descriptive programming provides a way to perform action on
objects which are not in Object repository

Object Identification:

To identify an object during the play back of the scripts
QTP stores some properties which helps QTP to uniquely
identify the object on a page. Below screen shots shows an
example Object repository:



Now to recognize a radio button on a page QTP had added 2
properties the name of the radio button and the html tag for
it. The name the left tree view is the logical name given by
QTP for the object. This can be changed as per the
convenience of the person writing the test case. QTP only
allows UNIQUE logical name under same level of hierarchy. As
we see in the snapshot the two objects in Browser->Page node
are “WebTable” and “testPath”, they cannot have the same
logical name. But an object under some other node can have
the same name. Now with the current repository that we have,
we can only write operation on objects which are in the
repository. Some of the example operations are given below

Browser("Browser").Page("Page").WebRadioGroup
("testPath").Select "2"

cellData = Browser("Browser").Page("Page").WebTable
("WebTable").GetCellData (1,1)

Browser("Example2").Page("Page").WebEdit("testPath").Set
"Test text"

When and Why to use Descriptive programming?

Below are some of the situations when Descriptive
Programming can be considered useful:
1. The objects in the application are dynamic in nature and
need special handling to identify the object. The best
example would be of clicking a link which changes according
to the user of the application, Ex. “Logout <<UserName>>”.
2. When object repository is getting huge due to the no. of
objects being added. If the size of Object repository
increases too much then it decreases the performance of QTP
while recognizing a object.
3. When you don’t want to use object repository at all. Well
the first question would be why not Object repository?
Consider the following scenario which would help understand
why not Object repository

Scenario 1: Suppose we have a web application that has not
been developed yet. Now QTP for recording the script and
adding the objects to repository needs the application to be
up, that would mean waiting for the application to be
deployed before we can start of with making QTP scripts. But
if we know the descriptions of the objects that will be
created then we can still start off with the script writing
for testing

Scenario 2: Suppose an application has 3 navigation buttons
on each and every page. Let the buttons be “Cancel”, “Back”
and “Next”. Now recording action on these buttons would add
3 objects per page in the repository. For a 10 page flow
this would mean 30 objects which could have been represented
just by using 3 objects. So instead of adding these 30
objects to the repository we can just write 3 descriptions
for the object and use it on any page.

4. Modification to a test case is needed but the Object
repository for the same is Read only or in shared mode i.e.
changes may affect other scripts as well.
5. When you want to take action on similar type of object
i.e. suppose we have 20 textboxes on the page and there
names are in the form txt_1, txt_2, txt_3 and so on. Now
adding all 20 the Object repository would not be a good
programming approach.

How to use Descriptive programming?

There are two ways in which descriptive programming can be used
1. By creating properties collection object for the description.
2. By giving the description in form of the string arguments.

1. By creating properties collection object for the description.

To use this method you need first to create an empty description

Dim obj_Desc ‘Not necessary to declare
Set obj_Desc = Description.Create

Now we have a blank description in “obj_Desc”. Each
description has 3 properties “Name”, “Value” and “Regular
Expression”.

obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”

When you use a property name for the first time the property
is added to the collection and when you use it again the
property is modified. By default each property that is
defined is a regular expression. Suppose if we have the
following description

obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt.*”

This would mean an object with html tag as INPUT and name
starting with txt. Now actually that “.*” was considered as
regular expression. So, if you want the property “name” not
to be recognized as a regular expression then you need to
set the “regularexpression” property as FALSE

obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt.*”
obj_Desc(“name”).regularexpression= “txt.*”

This is how of we create a description. Now below is the way
we can use it

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebEdit(obj_Desc).set “Test”

When we say .WebEdit(obj_Desc) we define one more property
for our description that was not earlier defined that is
it’s a text box (because QTPs WebEdit boxes map to text
boxes in a web page).

If we know that we have more than 1 element with same
description on the page then we must define “index” property
for the that description

Consider the HTML code given below

<INPUT type=”textbox” name=”txt_Name”>
<INPUT type=”textbox” name=”txt_Name”>

Now the html code has two objects with same description. So
distinguish between these 2 objects we will use the “index”
property. Here is the description for both the object

For 1st textbox:
obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt_Name”
obj_Desc(“index”).value= “0”

For 2nd textbox:
obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt_Name”
obj_Desc(“index”).value= “1”

Consider the HTML Code given below:

<INPUT type=”textbox” name=”txt_Name”>
<INPUT type=”radio” name=”txt_Name”>

We can use the same description for both the objects and
still distinguish between both of them
obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt_Name”

When I want to refer to the textbox then I will use the
inside a WebEdit object and to refer to the radio button I
will use the description object with the WebRadioGroup object.

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebEdit(obj_Desc).set “Test”
‘Refers to the text box
Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebRadioGroup(obj_Desc).set
“Test” ‘Refers to the radio button

But if we use WebElement object for the description then we
must define the “index” property because for a webelement
the current description would return two objects.

Hierarchy of test description:

When using programmatic descriptions from a specific point
within a test object hierarchy, you must continue to use
programmatic descriptions
from that point onward within the same statement. If you
specify a test object by its object repository name after
other objects in the hierarchy have
been described using programmatic descriptions, QuickTest
cannot identify the object.

For example, you can use
Browser(Desc1).Page(Desc1).Link(desc3), since it uses
programmatic descriptions throughout the entire test object
hierarchy.
You can also use Browser("Index").Page(Desc1).Link(desc3),
since it uses programmatic descriptions from a certain point
in the description (starting
from the Page object description).

However, you cannot use
Browser(Desc1).Page(Desc1).Link("Example1"), since it uses
programmatic descriptions for the Browser and Page objects but
then attempts to use an object repository name for the Link
test object (QuickTest tries to locate the Link object based
on its name, but cannot
locate it in the repository because the parent objects were
specified using programmatic descriptions).

Getting Child Object:

We can use description object to get all the objects on the
page that matches that specific description. Suppose we have
to check all the checkboxes present on a web page. So we
will first create an object description for a checkboxe and
then get all the checkboxes from the page

Dim obj_ChkDesc

Set obj_ChkDesc=Description.Create
obj_ChkDesc(“html tag”).value = “INPUT”
obj_ChkDesc(“type”).value = “checkbox”

Dim allCheckboxes, singleCheckBox

Set allCheckboxes =
Browse(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).ChildObjects(obj_ChkDesc)

For each singleCheckBox in allCheckboxes

singleCheckBox.Set “ON”

Next

The above code will check all the check boxes present on the
page. To get all the child objects we need to specify an
object description i.e. we can’t use the string arguments
that will be discussed later in the 2nd way of using the
programming description.

Possible Operation on Description Object

Consider the below code for all the solutions
Dim obj_ChkDesc

Set obj_ChkDesc=Description.Create
obj_ChkDesc(“html tag”).value = “INPUT”
obj_ChkDesc(“type”).value = “checkbox”

Q: How to get the no. of description defined in a collection
A: obj_ChkDesc.Count ‘Will return 2 in our case

Q: How to remove a description from the collection
A: obj_ChkDesc.remove “html tag” ‘would delete the html tag
property from the collection

Q: How do I check if property exists or not in the collection?
A: The answer is that it’s not possible. Because whenever we
try to access a property which is not defined its
automatically added to the collection. The only way to
determine is to check its value that is use a if statement
“if obj_ChkDesc(“html tag”).value = empty then”.

Q: How to browse through all the properties of a properties
collection?
A: Two ways
1st:
For each desc in obj_ChkDesc
Name=desc.Name
Value=desc.Value
RE = desc.regularexpression
Next
2nd:
For i=0 to obj_ChkDesc.count - 1
Name= obj_ChkDesc(i).Name
Value= obj_ChkDesc(i).Value
RE = obj_ChkDesc(i).regularexpression
Next

2. By giving the description in form of the string arguments.

You can describe an object directly in a statement by
specifying property:=value pairs describing the object
instead of specifying an object’s
name. The general syntax is:

TestObject("PropertyName1:=PropertyValue1", "..." ,
"PropertyNameX:=PropertyValueX")

TestObject—the test object class could be WebEdit,
WebRadioGroup etc….

PropertyName:=PropertyValue—the test object property and its
value. Each property:=value pair should be separated by
commas and quotation
marks. Note that you can enter a variable name as the
property value if you want to find an object based on
property values you retrieve during a run session.

Consider the HTML Code given below:

<INPUT type=”textbox” name=”txt_Name”>
<INPUT type=”radio” name=”txt_Name”>

Now to refer to the textbox the statement would be as given
below

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebEdit(“Name:=txt_Name”,”html
tag:=INPUT”).set “Test”

And to refer to the radio button the statement would be as
given below

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebRadioGroup(“Name:=txt_Name”,”html
tag:=INPUT”).set “Test”

If we refer to them as a web element then we will have to
distinguish between the 2 using the index property

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebElement(“Name:=txt_Name”,”html
tag:=INPUT”,”Index:=0”).set “Test” ‘ Refers to the textbox
Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebElement(“Name:=txt_Name”,”html
tag:=INPUT”,”Index:=1”).set “Test” ‘ Refers to the radio button


Reference:
1. “Mercury QuickTest Professional, User’s Guide, Version 8.0.1”

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