Hi, I have been tasked with writing automated tests that need to use

michaelp611 over 9 years ago

Hi,

I have been tasked with writing automated tests that need to use (browse, enter texts, click buttons etc) objects on Appian pages. I’ve been looking at the DOM for a few of the early-release pages and have having difficulty identifying ways of performing object identification.

As an example, an Appian page I’m looking at has a number of inputs (text, dates, dropdows etc….). Picking two different textboxes at random I see:-

<input type="text" class="aui-TextInput" id="gwt-uid-245" aria-required="true" aria-invalid="false" style="text-align: left;">
and
<input type="text" class="aui-TextInput" id="gwt-uid-271" aria-required="true" aria-invalid="false" style="text-align: left;">

The wrapping/parent elements do not have anything that can be used and the id attributes change between page renderings. Is anyone else using Test Automation with Appian and if so, how are they doing robust object identification? Is there a way I can get the design...

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0 michaelp611 over 9 years ago

...ers to add attributes for unique identification or a way to ensure the id attributes (IE. gwt-uid-245) are fixed for the field they are used on?
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0 aneeshv713 over 9 years ago

You can use Selenium and Cucumber. Every time UI is changed, you have to Update your feature files in Selenium accordingly.
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0 pritamd over 9 years ago

Does this Id change after each build deployed? During the Automation testing implementation for Appian Applications, we faced an issue where the Id's changed after each build; However there was still a field where the Prefix remained the same for all the builds and only the value after the postfix kept changing. We were able to use this field as the object identifier.
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0 Michael Chirlin
Appian Employee
over 9 years ago

This is a common occurrence with gwt-based applications. Although there are not constant ids for the form inputs, you can still access the inputs in other ways.

For example, if using Selenium you have the option of accessing css or xpath. Below are two examples:

css:
div.aui-Section:nth-child(0) div.column_panel:nth-child(0) div div div:nth-child(0) div.aui_FieldLayout input

grabs the first field in the first column in the first section

xpath:
//label[contains(text(),'"fieldName"')]/parent::span/following-sibling::div/div/input

grabs the input whose label is fieldName.

It requires building some classes to handle the accessing and population of different Appian field types, but its certainly possible.
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0 vaibhavm
A Score Level 2
over 9 years ago

The ids are not constant but there are other ways with which you can identify an element. If you're testing using selenium, you can use the fire bug and copy the xpath of that element. You can refer this as well.
www.wikihow.com/Find-XPath-Using-Firebug . You might have to put some logical functions to fill in fields but it is possible.
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0 sridharu602 over 9 years ago

Hi Michael,
I hope you would got the solution by this time, how ever I am posting this response so that it might help you and others in case :-)

I used Selenium and UFT as part of automating appian based applications. I have been using the xpath based on the section and the field hierarchy to identify each item unique.
You can use the div in which the input resides, look at the below example:
//label[text()='UDF_DATA']/../following-sibling::div//input
The above xpath will take care the input which is there in the div along with a label for the input field.
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0 Utkarsh Seth over 9 years ago

Are you still looking to the solution for this one? Let me know if you still need help
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