UI Automation with MSAA
in [CSharp]
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From: Steve on 6 Jan 2010 08:24 I hope this is an appropriate group to post this question. If it is not I would appreciate someone pointing out a more appriate group. I hope someone can help me with this as I have been fighting this issue for several days now. I am writing an app which will automate some tedious manual work have to do in my job. The way the solution will work is to basically execute another application (third party commercial software package) then perform actions (ie button pushes, menu item selections etc.) on the UI elements of the newly started application. I have this solution working for the most part utilizing MSAA to get references to and manipulate the various UI elements of the applcation. However I have one problem I have not been able to solve. This problem involves what looks like a listview or grid control (although the class name returned by Spy++ is WindowsForms10.Window.8.app3). What I am trying to do is to step through the items (rows) in this grid/listview, selecting the row, reading the text out of the first column then click a button on the same parent as the grid/listview. Doing this sequence of actions should cause the other app to open the selected document in it's main window. As I said this is working for the most part. The only problem I am having is the select of the item (row) which means when I "click" the button I am always open the first document (selected by default when the window opens) in the list. I can correctly get the collection IAccessible objects referencing the rows of the grid/listview and loop through that collection returning the text in the first column of each. However when I attempt to force a row to be selected...nothing hapens. Ok there is what I am trying to do and the problem I am having now here is the code I am using. // Get the list of row items from the project list grid Rows = ProjectList.GetChildren (AccessibleUIItemType.Row); // Get the number of items in the list numProjects = Rows.Count(); // Get the Row item associated with curProject MSAAUIItem Row = Rows[curProject]; // Make sure this is the selected row Row.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS | SelFlags.TAKESELECTION); // The statement above seems to have no effect // Get the project name. This will be the name of the rows first child ProjectName = Row.Properties.Name; All of the above statements except the Row.Select statement do excatly what I would expect. Can anyone shed some light on what I might be doing wrong here. I also have a somewhat different (but related) question, why are none of the windows in this application I am trying to automate "normal" windows? They all seem to have this wierd "WindowsForms10.Window. 8.app3" (or something similar) class where I would have expected "SysListView32". Thanks in advance for any help Steve
From: Helmut Giese on 6 Jan 2010 08:41 Hi Steve, just a wild hunch (but it reminded me of a problem I had with a grid on a tabbed notebook): Are you sure (I mean _really_ sure) that the grid has the focus? In my case the tab page was selected, but the focus was not in the grid - and i could set Row.Select(...) all day long without any effect. Try explicitly giving the grid the focus, and then select the wanted row. > // Make sure this is the selected row > Row.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS | >SelFlags.TAKESELECTION); > // The statement above seems to have no effect HTH Helmut Giese
From: Steve on 6 Jan 2010 08:59 On Jan 6, 8:41 am, Helmut Giese <hgi...(a)ratiosoft.com> wrote: > Hi Steve, > just a wild hunch (but it reminded me of a problem I had with a grid > on a tabbed notebook): Are you sure (I mean _really_ sure) that the > grid has the focus? > In my case the tab page was selected, but the focus was not in the > grid - and i could set Row.Select(...) all day long without any > effect. > Try explicitly giving the grid the focus, and then select the wanted > row. > > > // Make sure this is the selected row > > Row.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS | > >SelFlags.TAKESELECTION); > > // The statement above seems to have no effect > > HTH > Helmut Giese Helmut, Thanks for the suggestion...I will try it. If it does work I will be somewhat shocked as I would have expected the code as written to force focus to the actual row of the grid. It is my understanding from the docs on MSAA that the TAKEFOCUS flag does exactly this. Anyway I will try first giving the grid the focus then calling my row specific code...I'll let you know how it works out. Thanks, Steve
From: Steve on 6 Jan 2010 09:49 No success. Here is what I have tried. 1) Set focus and select the IAccessible "Row" object by calling Row.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS | SelFlags.TAKESELECTION) as mentioned before, this does not work. 2) First setting focus to the rows parent grid window then setting focus and selecting the Row like this. ProjectList.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS); Row.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS | SelFlags.TAKESELECTION) This also did not work. 3) First setting focus to the grids parent window then setting focus to the grid then setting focus and selecting the row OpenProjectUI.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS); ProjectList.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS); Row.Select(SelFlags.TAKEFOCUS | SelFlags.TAKESELECTION) This also did not work. I am nearly positive that the focus is changing as expected but the selection never does. I say that the focus part is working because if I place a breakpoint in my code to pause execution (after setting focus) and press the down arrow key, the keypress go to the grid and the selected row changes. In order for my automation of this application to work, I must be able to switch the selection from one item in the list to the next because the next action is to be performed on the selected item. Any other thoughts? Thanks, Steve
From: Steve on 6 Jan 2010 10:39
Ok I spoke to soon in my last post. It seems that the third try (described in my previous post) does in fact work. However the highlight is not being moved to the newly selected row. The only way I can tell that the selected row has changed is that the little pointer icon (which indicates current row) is moved to the row of my choosing. Now although the code mentioned does seem to work in that it does move the current row icon (though not the row selection hightlight) the app being automated does not seem to regocnize that the current row has changed. IOW words after changing the current row (as per the code in try three of my previous post) then performing another UI action which is to operate on the currently selected item in the list...the action is performed againt the highlighted row not the one I selected and which has the current row indicator. Any ideas? Thanks, Steve |