Accessing Native Properties and Methods of Visual Basic Objects

About Accessing Native Properties and Methods

Getting and Setting Native Object Properties

Calling Native Object Methods

Important Notes

TestComplete identifies individual GUI objects in Visual Basic applications and provides special methods and properties for automating various operations over these objects, getting object data, checking an object's state and so on. However, if these predefined properties and methods are insufficient for your testing needs, you can use native properties and methods of Visual Basic objects to complete the desired tasks. These are the same properties and methods that are available for use in the tested application’s source code, as well as custom properties and methods implemented by the application developers. This way, you can perform almost any operation in the tested Visual Basic application, even those that cannot be performed via the application’s GUI.

The Object Browser marks objects of Visual Basic applications with the glyph. To view native members available for a Visual Basic object, use the Object Spy or Object Browser in the Advanced view mode. In the Object Browser, native properties and methods of Visual Basic objects are displayed under the Visual Basic category (see Important Notes for details).

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For more information on how to refer to objects in Visual Basic applications, see Addressing Objects in Visual Basic Applications.

To access an object’s property in script code, you specify the property name after the object name using the dot operator "." (in VBScript, JScript, Python and DelphiScript projects) or the square bracket notation [" "] (in C++Script and C#Script projects).

For example, you can get and set a Visual Basic form’s title using its native Caption property in the following way:

In keyword tests, you can retrieve an object’s property value and save it to a test variable using the Set Variable Value operation. To change a property value, you can use the On-Screen Action operation to call the property’s [Set] method. For more information, see Getting and Setting Object Property Values.

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You can also create checkpoints to verify the values of native object properties.

To call an object’s method from script code, you use the dot operator "." (in VBScript, JScript, Python and DelphiScript projects) or the square bracket notation [" "] (in C++Script and C#Script projects) to specify the method name after the object name.

For example, in script code you can call the native Customize method of a Visual Basic toolbar as follows:

In keyword tests, you can use the On-Screen Action operation to call an object’s native method. For more information, see Calling Object Methods.

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• In the Object Spy or Object Browser, native properties and methods of Visual Basic objects are displayed only in the Advanced view mode.

• Hidden properties, events and methods are not displayed by default. If you need to view hidden properties, enable the Show hidden properties option in the TestComplete Options dialog.

• If a native property or method has the same name as the test object property or method provided by TestComplete, the native property or method can be accessed via the NativeVBObject property. For example, you can access the native Name property of a Visual Basic application’s form as follows:

  JavaScript, JScript

  Python

  VBScript

  DelphiScript

  C++Script, C#Script

  JavaScript, JScript

  Aliases.Orders.MainForm.NativeVBObject.Name

  Python

  Aliases.Orders.MainForm.NativeVBObject.Name

  VBScript

  Aliases.Orders.MainForm.NativeVBObject.Name

  DelphiScript

  Aliases.Orders.MainForm.NativeVBObject.Name

  C++Script, C#Script

  Aliases["Orders"]["MainForm"]["NativeVBObject"]["Name"]

• The leading underscore ( _ ) in property and method names is replaced with the character z. For example, a property named _flag is accessed as zflag, a method named __reset() is accessed as z_reset(), and so on.

• If the object contains overloaded methods (methods with the same name but different parameters and they return value types), TestComplete appends indexes to method names in order to distinguish them. For example, GetChildAtPoint() and GetChildAtPoint_2(). To determine which index-suffixed method name corresponds to which overloaded method, examine the method’s parameter list in the Object Spy, Object Browser or Code Completion.

• Some native properties and methods of Visual Basic objects are unavailable to TestComplete. For more information, see Object Properties, Fields and Methods That Are Unavailable to TestComplete.