Testing ActiveX applications with Robot Framework

[Thomas Jaspers]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone here has experiences in testing ActiveX applications (to be precise Siebel CRM in an IE8 :))?

Obviously Selenium does not work out with ActiveX controls and I did a first quick try using AutoIT which looks kind of
promising, but it does not show any IDs and it does not recognice all the elements like "tabs" and content in "tables" when
inspecting the application.

Does anyone know if this is nevertheless a good way to proceed, are there any "tricks" (unfortunelty my experiences with
AutoIT and Windows COM are quite limited) or ist there any other way to automate ActiveX tests?

Thanks a lot in advance
Cheers
- Thomas

[David]

It also depends if that ActiveX/COM object exposes any non-UI functionality via COM API method calls. If it did, you can automate some functionality through those via Python COM interface (or Java/.NET COM interface, but not via Jython I think). But if all there is to it is the ActiveX GUI object, you're stuck using GUI means to automate.

And that basically means:

* AutoIt

* Sikuli or other image recognition tool

* White .NET based Windows UI automation (https://github.com/TestStack/White)

* Microsoft's native UIAutomation support via .NET

If AutoIt isn't sufficient, then White is the next best option to evaluate. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, no one has yet wrapped White in a RF library (via IronPython or as pure .NET/C# library), so you'd have to do it yourself for the keywords you need.

[Thomas Jaspers]

Hi David,

thanks a lot for the quick response. This gives some ideas and options how to proceed with this.

Best Regards
- Thomas

[Sarah McK]

Thomas, How'd it go for you here?  We're looking at something similar and just getting started....

thanks,

Sarah