Support for Delphi Applications' Controls

TestComplete provides support for a number of the most popular controls of Delphi applications. It automatically recognizes individual controls by their classes (the value of the control’s ClassName property) and lets you interact with them both at design time and while recording or replaying a test. Based on the object type, TestComplete provides a set of object-specific methods and properties for automating various interactions with the object. For example:

• Clicking a button is recorded and played back using the ClickButton operation,

• Item selection in combo box, list box and list view controls -- using the ClickItem operation,

• Clicks on grid cells -- using the ClickCell operation,

• And so on.

When you record user actions with supported Delphi controls, TestComplete records these special methods and properties applied to the corresponding objects, rather than just coordinate clicks. You can see some of these methods, specifically, SetText, ClickItem and ClickButton, in the sample test below.

Some controls, such as Label, do not have specific high-level operations associated with them because users do not generally interact with these objects. However, these objects are also available in the application’s object hierarchy, and you can use them in your tests if necessary. For example, you can create checkpoints for these objects.

For a complete list of supported Delphi controls and properties and methods that TestComplete provides for automating these controls, see the following topics:

Note that TestComplete provides support for the listed controls as well as for their descendants. However, to make this possible, you need to specify the class name of your inherited control in the corresponding group of the project’s Object Mapping options.

TestComplete enables creating of Table Checkpoints for some of the Delphi controls that represent information in a tabular form (for the full list of these controls see About Tables Collection). With table checkpoints you can retrieve and compare data of Delphi tabular controls.

In addition to control-specific methods and properties for automating operations on Delphi controls, TestComplete provides access to native properties and methods of these objects. These are the same properties and methods that are used in the application’s source code. You can use these native properties and methods to extend your tests and perform custom operations that are not available with standard properties and methods provided by TestComplete. For more information, see Accessing Native Properties and Methods of Delphi Objects.

You can test unsupported Delphi applications’ controls using properties and methods provided by TestComplete to on-screen objects. Interactions with these controls are typically recorded as generic coordinate clicks.

You can also automate these controls by calling their native properties and methods from your test or using various helper techniques described in the Interacting With Non-Compatible Application Objects topic.

To learn how to perform elementary testing operations with applications’ controls, see Working With Standard Windows Controls. This section includes a description of the most common control-specific operations you may need to perform with the tested controls, for example, checking a button’s state, determining the number of combo box items, getting tab pages’ images, expanding and collapsing tree view items and so on. For detailed information on approaches you can use to test your applications’ controls, see the Working with Application Objects and Controls section.

In addition to control-specific operations, there are some common tasks you may need to perform with any application’s object (for example, checking an object's state, searching for an object or checking whether an object exists). For the full list of these basic operations and descriptions of how to perform them, see Common tasks.