Once a View is captured with the View Recorder, it is accessible in the owner Context or one of the Actions belonging to the Context, in the form of View Canvas.
View Canvas is the rendering of the View which allows interactions as relevant for test development. When you move your cursor around, the canvas is interactable at an element level.
Use cases in the View canvas are accomplished first by hovering on the element-of-interest and then invoking the context menu with a right-click. The following sections describe this process in detail.
Hovering in the View
Based on your current cursor position on the canvas, ACCELQ highlights a rectangular area representing the most prominent element at that location.
Hovering on an element already in the repository
A green rectangle represents that the element being hovered is already part of the element repository (listed in the Elements tab in the Action or Context). Tooltip on such an element shows the name of the element and its type, suffixed with the HTML/Mobile tag.
Hovering on an element not yet saved in the repository
A blue highlighted element indicates the element is not yet saved in the repository. Tooltip on these elements shows the element type and the associated tag.
Getting hold of an element overlapped with other elements
There will be occasions, where you may find multiple overlapping elements in the element structure, and you need to catch hold of an element internal to this hierarchy. ACCELQ supports Explore mode to hover on hard-to-reach elements on the screen layout.
In the following picture, the user's intent is to arrive at the "Home" link, but due to the conflicting placement of elements, ACCELQ by default highlights an overlapping rectangle on the top. Explore mode allows you to reach the Home link by double-clicking on the canvas cursor location where the Home link is displayed. This is called Explore mode.
Refer to this article for a detailed description of Explore mode.
Ambiguous elements on hover
When there are multiple overlapping elements in the hovered area, and ACCELQ cannot clearly assign a preference to one of the elements, you will find an orange color tooltip indicating the ambiguity. Before you can interact with this highlighted area, you will need to explore the vicinity. Refer to explore mode article for further details on this.
Important note: When you hover on any element, make sure the tooltip indicates the correct "type" of the element that you are expecting. There may be multiple hover areas in the immediate vicinity and you may sometimes need to move your mouse around a bit to arrive at the correct element.
Hovering in a table (Web only)
When you are hovering in the View containing an HTML table, ACCELQ highlights the whole table as an element. It also draws a dotted border around the currently hovered cell, with the row number and column number of the cell displayed. This information is useful for writing table related statements in your Action logic. Remember the index/numbering in ACCELQ always starts from 1. So, the first row is indicated as row# 1.
You can also reach any content/element inside the table, by simply double-clicking in the required position and switching to Explore mode.
Context menu options
Once you hover and locate the required element on the Canvas, you can perform various actions by right-clicking on the element. Menu options differ slightly for the View canvas in a Context and Action. The following sections describe the functionality available from these menus.
Save Element to Repository
When you hover on a new element (blue background hover), you get an option to save it to the repository. When saving an element to the repository, you can configure the "Selector" or identification properties. Once saved, the element is now available to use in any of the Actions belonging to this Context.
If the element in hover, was already part of the repository, you get an option to open the element and edit properties.
Learn more about setting up element identification.
Insert a Command
This option is available in the context menu displayed in the Action page. From the context menu, select a command to perform on the element. Depending on the type of element, ACCELQ already highlights the most common command. You can search or select other commands.
Once a command is selected, the corresponding statement is inserted in the Action logic. Refer to Action entity articles for further information on Action logic creation.
Reconciling an Element
Reconciliation of element is the process where you update the identification of an already existing (saved) element to a new element displayed in the screen. This may be required in two cases:
Reconcile an Abstract element
You had earlier created an element as an abstract element (without setting up the selector), due to the lack of availability of the application's UI. You now need to define this element, as the UI (View) is available. This is most common when you are adapting in-sprint automation and developing automation tests in parallel to the application development efforts.
Reconcile an element due to application changes
You have an existing saved element, but the element's identification went through a complete make-over due to application UI updates. This existing element needs to be re-mapped in a new View you captured for the same Context.
Note: Element update will not be necessary for positional changes or some minor attribute changes. Typically this will be required only if the element's structure/content has gone through a significant make-over.
Reconciliation process
To update an existing element with an element found on the View, hover on the element and select "Re-map a saved element with this element" in the context menu. The system will present the list of elements from the repository, with the most probable candidates highlighted in bold on the top. Simply select the element to be updated, and follow instructions to set up the selector.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.