Addressing Objects in Qt Applications

About Object Names in the Object Browser

Addressing Qt Objects Using Name Mapping and Aliases

Addressing Qt Objects Without Name Mapping

Combining Mapped and Unmapped Object Names

Accessing Non-Visual Objects in Qt Applications

Further Reading

You can explore the object structure of the tested application in the Object Browser. Below is a sample view of a Qt application's hierarchy displayed in the Object Browser:

Click the image to enlarge it.

Here, the Process("Orders") branch of the Sys object corresponds to your tested Qt application and the other objects correspond to the application’s controls and objects.

To refer to an individual object in the tested Qt application, select the needed object in the Object Browser or Object Spy. These tools display the selected object’s name above the member list. From the right-click menu, you can copy this name to the clipboard and then insert it into your test.

Click the image to enlarge it.

You may notice that this name differs from what you see in the object tree on the left of the Object Browser. This is because the name displayed at the top of the panel uses object aliases if they are defined, whereas the object tree uses the naming syntax that includes identification properties. The differences between the two object naming syntaxes are explained in the Addressing Qt Objects Using Name Mapping and Aliases and Addressing Qt Objects Without Name Mapping sections below.

You can also learn the object names in different syntaxes by looking at the following object properties:

• MappedName - the object’s fully-qualified alias (including the aliases of all parent objects). This name is used for the object by default in your tests. Note that if the selected object is not in Name Mapping, this property is empty.

• Name - the object name that includes the object's identification properties. This is the same name you see in the Object Browser’s object tree. For an explanation of this syntax, see below.

• FullName - the object’s fully-qualified name in the syntax that includes the identification properties. This name consists of the object’s Name property value and the Names property value of all of the object's parent objects. See below.

By default, TestComplete uses object names from Name Mapping (the object repository) to refer to individual objects in Qt applications under test. These names are called aliases. When you are recording a test, TestComplete automatically adds the recorded objects to Name Mapping and generates aliases for them.

You can see the available object aliases and add new aliases in the Name Mapping editor.

Here, Mapped Objects and Aliases display the hierarchy of mapped objects and their aliases, respectively. The fully-qualified alias that can be used to refer to an object is displayed in the top right part of the Name Mapping editor (see the image above). It starts with Aliases and includes aliases of all of the object’s parent objects separated by dots (in VBScript, JScript, Python and DelphiScript projects) or square brackets (in C++Script and C#Script projects). For example, in the image above you can see that you can refer to the ToolButton object using the following name:

You can copy object aliases from the Name Mapping editor to the clipboard and use them when manually adding test operations over the tested application’s objects.

The following example demonstrates sample unchecking of the ToolButton control specified by an alias:

Note that the fully-qualified mapped name for this object is the following:

Since the TextEdit and ToolBar objects are of no interest for our test, we exclude them from the path to the ToolButton object in the Alias tree, so the object hierarchy becomes shorter. Using aliases lets you make your scripts shorter and more readable.

For more information about using Name Mapping and aliases, see Name Mapping and Access Objects by Aliases.

Your tests can work not only with applications and objects added to Name Mapping, but also with any other running applications, their windows and controls. These objects can be addressed by using a syntax that directly includes identification property values.

Consider the following sample code and keyword test that illustrate how you can refer to an object in your Qt application:

To learn the exact syntax for referring to a particular object, use the Object Browser - the object tree and the FullName property of objects always use this naming syntax. See the About Object Names in the Object Browser section above.

Let’s have a closer look at this notation and its components.

• The notation starts with Sys object that represents the operating system.

• The next object, Process("textedit"), represents the Qt application with the file name textedit.exe.

• The other objects represent windows, controls and objects in the tested Qt application. TestComplete uses the following default syntax for these objects:

  QtObject(NativeName)

  Here, NativeName is the object name as it is specified in the tested application’s source code (the string that is returned by the object’s native objectName property).

  Another possible syntax for Qt objects is:

  QtObject(QtClassName, Text, [Index])

  Instead of the object’s native name, it uses its Qt class name (the class name as it is specified by the QtClassName property), window caption (the value returned by the QtText property) and (optionally) index among sibling objects with the same class and text.

  The Index parameter is used only if the object contains two or more child objects that have the same class name and caption.

  This syntax is used in the following cases:

  • TestComplete cannot determine the object name that is specified in the application code.

  • There are several objects with the same name.

  For more information about the Qt object addressing syntax and its parameters, see the description of the QtObject notation.

For examples of this syntax applied to objects in your tested Qt application, examine your application in the Object Browser. You can also copy this syntax from the Object Browser and paste it to your test in order not to manually type it.

Remarks

You can combine aliases specified in Name Mapping and the QtObject notation when referencing an object hierarchy in tests. For example, you can use aliases for parent objects and the QtObject notation for child objects:

However, keep in mind that aliases must always precede the QtObject notation in the object hierarchy. Aliases cannot be used after the QtObject notation within the same statement. That is, the following statement is invalid:

Qt applications can include non-visual objects that are not displayed in the Object Browser. However, you can access these objects from your tests.

To get access to a non-visual object, you need to find a property, field or method of another object (visual or non-visual) that would return a reference to the desired object. The parent object can be either visual or non-visual, but the root object in the tree of parent objects must be a visual object. To find the needed property or method, examine the tested Qt application in the Object Browser or ask the application developers where you can find it.

Qt applications can also include alien widgets, that is non-windowed components that do not have window handles associated with them. For detailed information on how to test such components with TestComplete, see Testing Alien Widgets of Qt Applications.

The following topics explain how to refer to objects in Qt applications while performing common operations over them: