This is second article in the series of TestComplete. This article will give you an overview of the important features like TestComplete IDE ( Integrated Development Environment ) , so that you can identify and get hold of the object you want and stores so that you can use them as verification point in your projects. If you are not familiar with TestComplete, our first article will help you in getting overview of TestComplete.

TestComplete IDE is the first thing you will use while working on TestComplete. Since this is the development environment you will use for your automation, it is very important that you make yourself familiar with this, and use all the features provided by this to make yourself more productive. TestComplete IDE can be divided into different panels. The important ones among them are:

Project Explorer As the name suggests, this panel is used to explore the contents of your project suite or your project.

Workspace All the coding is done in this area.

Log Panel Well this panel displays all your result logs

Code Explorer This appears as a tab beside the Project explorer. It does the same job as the Project Explorer except it displays the scripts in your projects.

Object Browser This panel displays all your objects identified by TestComplete in the form of an object tree. The values of the properties of these objects can be saved in the Stores (explained later in the article).

Watch List This panel is used to check the values of the variables during script debugging.

Following figure will show most of these panel, which will help you in your automation projects.

Object Inspector

After understanding the IDE its time to step forward and understand the Object Inspector. Object Inspector is the small button on the top of the IDE. It is used to find the properties of the objects and display them in the Object Properties Window. This is very important functionality, because it helps you in identifying the object and also gives you information on what kind of methods and properties can be used from this object. If used properly, Object Inspector can help you immensely in your project. Clicking on this small button on IDE, opens the object properties window

As shown above, There is a small circle on this Object Properties Window. This is the object finder. It is dragged over the object whose properties you need to find out. Let's take an example of how it can be used to find out the properties of the browser window in which TestingGeek is opened. All you need to do is, drag this circle over the browser window where TestingGeek is opened. You will see a red rectangle enclosing that window. This red rectangle is also an indication that TestComplete has identified the object clearly.

TestComplete treats items captured in red rectangle as a single object which object finder can identify. After the object is identified its properties and methods are displayed in the Object Properties window as seen in the figure. The different tabs like fields, methods and events give you information about the what properties you can access and what operation you can perform. For example, for a checkbox you can get information on whether it is selected or not and can select it by using its methods in your automation scripts. Similarly event tab will have information on what kind of events are applicable to the object in question. The description area gives you the description of the methods as you select them explaining its purpose or its signature.

Stores

Store is similar to the concept of verification point present on most of the tools. Stores is collection of project items (files) in which you save the data that can be used for future verifications. You can directly use store from the object tree as seen in figure. Just R-click on the object and select Store Object. This will save the properties for the object in the project you select. These properties can be used later for verification. For example, whether radio button is selected or not, checkbox is selected or not, textbox is editable or not etc.

There are three different types of collections stored in the Stores object.

Files Files Collection stores all the files. There is a Files Object corresponding to this which can be used for managing the Files saved in this section of the Stores.

Regions This collection is used to store all the image files or regions of images. It provides Regions Object which can be used to compare two images or find one image in another.

Objects This collection stores the properties of objects in the form of XML files. This Object object provides methods for saving the application object properties to the Stores collection, compare properties.

There are some common methods provided by these Stores Objects. These methods are applicable to all the types of store objects. They are self explanatory and are listed below

• Add
• Count
• Compare
• Remove
• Save

Stores can be used as Verification Point in Automation using Test Complete. You can also customize and enhance these stores to meet your specific application need.

Hope this article was helpful to you and gave you some more insight on how TestComplete works. As always your feedback is welcome about this article. In the next article, we will cover more advanced features of TestComplete, or better still let us know what you would like to see on TestComplete and TestingGeek will have it for you.