QTP

Ways to Launch your application
Four different ways to launch your application are mentioned below:

1) SystemUtil.Run

SystemUtil.Run ( FileName, Parameters, Path, Operation )
FileName - The name of the file you want to run.
Parameters - If the specified FileName is an executable file, use the Parameters argument to specify any parameters to be passed to the application.
Path - The default directory of the application or file.
Operation - The action to be performed. If this argument is blank (""), the open operation is performed.
The following operations can be specified for the operation argument of the SystemUtil.Run method:
open - Opens the file specified by the FileName parameter. The file can be an executable file, a document file, or a folder. Non-executable files are open in the associated application.
edit - Launches an editor and opens the document for editing. If the FileName argument does not specify an editable document file, the statement fails.
explore - Explores the folder specified by the FileName argument.
find - Initiates a search starting from the specified folder path.
print - Prints the document file specified by the FileName argument. If the specified file is not a printable document file, the statement fails.
Example:SystemUtil.Run "D:\My Music\Breathe.mp3","","D:\My Music\Details","open"

2) InvokeApplication

This command is now mainly used for the backward compatability ie to use with the lower versions(below QTP 6.0) of QTP.

InvokeApplication("Full URL as Parameter")
Example:InvokeApplication "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE http://www.yahoo.com"

3) VBscript to invoke application

1. Create a "WScript.shell" object.
2. Use the "run" object to launch the application. If the path to your executable contains spaces, use Chr(34) to ensure the path is contained within double quotes.
3. When done, set the shell object to nothing to release it.

Example:
Dim oShellSet oShell = CreateObject ("Wscript.shell")'
Example 1 - run a batch file:oShell.run "F:\jdk1.3.1\demo\jfc\SwingSet2.bat"'
Example 2 - run a Java jar file:oShell.run "java -jar F:\jdk1.3.1\demo\jfc\SwingSet2\SwingSet2.jar"'
Example 3 - launch Internet Explorer:oShell.Run Chr(34) & "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" & Chr(34)Set oShell = Nothing

4) Trivial but useful method

If nothing works out you might try this

You can use the Start -> Run dialog of Windows.
1. Add the Windows Start button to the Object Repository using the "Add Objects" button in Object Repository dialog.
2. Open the Run dialog (Start -> Run), and learn the "Open" edit field and the "OK" button into the Object Repository.
3. Switch to the Expert View, and manually add the lines to open the Run dialog.
Example:Window("Window").WinButton("Button").ClickWindow("Window").Type("R")
4. Manually enter the lines to enter the information to launch the application, and click the "OK" button of the Run dialog.

Example:
Dialog("Run").WinEdit("Open:").Type "c:\WINNT\system32\notepad.exe"
Dialog("Run").WinButton("OK").Click
Descriptive Programming Simplified
Introduction:
This blog demonstrates the usage of Descriptive programming in QTP 8.2. It also discusses situations where Descriptive programming can be used. Using Descriptive Programming automation scripts can be created even if the application has not been developed.

Descriptive Programming:
Whenever QTP records any action on any object of an application, it adds some description on how to recognize that object to a repository of objects called object repository. QTP cannot take action on an object until unless its object description is in the Object Repository. But descriptive programming provides a way to perform action on objects which are not in Object repository

Object Identification:
To identify an object during the play back of the scripts QTP stores some properties which helps QTP to uniquely identify the object on a page. Below screen shots shows an example Object repository:












Now to recognize a radio button on a page QTP had added 2 properties the name of the radio button and the html tag for it. The name the left tree view is the logical name given by QTP for the object. This can be changed as per the convenience of the person writing the test case. QTP only allows UNIQUE logical name under same level of hierarchy. As we see in the snapshot the two objects in Browser->Page node are “WebTable” and “testPath”, they cannot have the same logical name. But an object under some other node can have the same name. Now with the current repository that we have, we can only write operation on objects which are in the repository. Some of the example operations are given below

Browser("Browser").Page("Page").WebRadioGroup ("testPath").Select "2"
CellData = Browser("Browser").Page("Page").WebTable ("WebTable").GetCellData (1,1)
Browser("Example2").Page("Page").WebEdit("testPath").Set "Test text"

When and Why to use Descriptive programming?

Below are some of the situations when Descriptive Programming can be considered useful:
1. The objects in the application are dynamic in nature and need special handling to identify the object. The best example would be of clicking a link which changes according to the user of the application, Ex. “Logout <>”.

2. When object repository is getting huge due to the no. of objects being added. If the size of Object repository increases too much then it decreases the performance of QTP while recognizing a object.

3. When you don’t want to use object repository at all. Well the first question would be why not Object repository? Consider the following scenario which would help understand why not Object repository
Scenario 1: Suppose we have a web application that has not been developed yet.Now QTP for recording the script and adding the objects to repository needs the application to be up, that would mean waiting for the application to be deployed before we can start of with making QTP scripts. But if we know the descriptions of the objects that will be created then we can still start off with the script writing for testing
Scenario 2: Suppose an application has 3 navigation buttons on each and every page. Let the buttons be “Cancel”, “Back” and “Next”. Now recording action on these buttons would add 3 objects per page in the repository. For a 10 page flow this would mean 30 objects which could have been represented just by using 3 objects. So instead of adding these 30 objects to the repository we can just write 3 descriptions for the object and use it on any page.

4. Modification to a test case is needed but the Object repository for the same is Read only or in shared mode i.e. changes may affect other scripts as well.
5. When you want to take action on similar type of object i.e. suppose we have 20 textboxes on the page and there names are in the form txt_1, txt_2, txt_3 and so on. Now adding all 20 the Object repository would not be a good programming approach.

How to use Descriptive Programming?

There are two ways in which descriptive programming can be used
1. By creating properties collection object for the description.
2. By giving the description in form of the string arguments.

1. By creating properties collection object for the description.
To use this method you need first to create an empty description
Dim obj_Desc ‘Not necessary to declare
Set obj_Desc = Description.Create

Now we have a blank description in “obj_Desc”. Each description has 3 properties “Name”, “Value” and “Regular Expression”.

obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”

When you use a property name for the first time the property is added to the collection and when you use it again the property is modified. By default each property that is defined is a regular expression. Suppose if we have the following description

obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt.*”

This would mean an object with html tag as INPUT and name starting with txt. Now actually that “.*” was considered as regular expression. So, if you want the property “name” not to be recognized as a regular expression then you need to set the “regularexpression” property as FALSE

obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt.*”
obj_Desc(“name”).regularexpression= “txt.*”

This is how we create a description. Now below is the way we can use it

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebEdit(obj_Desc).set “Test”

When we say .WebEdit(obj_Desc) we define one more property for our description that was not earlier defined that is it’s a text box (because QTPs WebEdit boxes map to text boxes in a web page).

If we know that we have more than 1 element with same description on the page then we must define “index” property for the that description

Consider the HTML code given below

<--!input type="”textbox”" name="”txt_Name”"-->
<--!input type="”textbox”" name="”txt_Name”"-->

Now the html code has two objects with same description. So distinguish between these 2 objects we will use the “index” property. Here is the description for both the object

For 1st textbox:
obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt_Name”
obj_Desc(“index”).value= “0”

For 2nd textbox:
obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt_Name”
obj_Desc(“index”).value= “1”

Consider the HTML Code given below:

<--!input type="”textbox”" name="”txt_Name”"-->
<--!input type="”radio”" name="”txt_Name”"-->

We can use the same description for both the objects and still distinguish between both of them
obj_Desc(“html tag”).value= “INPUT”
obj_Desc(“name”).value= “txt_Name”

When I want to refer to the textbox then I will use the inside a WebEdit object and to refer to the radio button I will use the description object with the WebRadioGroup object.

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebEdit(obj_Desc).set “Test” ‘Refers to the text box
Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebRadioGroup(obj_Desc).set “Test” ‘Refers to the radio button

But if we use WebElement object for the description then we must define the “index” property because for a webelement the current description would return two objects.

Hierarchy of test description:

When using programmatic descriptions from a specific point within a test object hierarchy, you must continue to use programmatic descriptions
from that point onward within the same statement. If you specify a test object by its object repository name after other objects in the hierarchy have
been described using programmatic descriptions, QuickTest cannot identify the object.

For example, you can use Browser(Desc1).Page(Desc1).Link(desc3), since it uses programmatic descriptions throughout the entire test object hierarchy.
You can also use Browser("Index").Page(Desc1).Link(desc3), since it uses programmatic descriptions from a certain point in the description (starting
from the Page object description).

However, you cannot use Browser(Desc1).Page(Desc1).Link("Example1"), since it uses programmatic descriptions for the Browser and Page objects but
then attempts to use an object repository name for the Link test object (QuickTest tries to locate the Link object based on its name, but cannot
locate it in the repository because the parent objects were specified using programmatic descriptions).

Getting Child Object:

We can use description object to get all the objects on the page that matches that specific description. Suppose we have to check all the checkboxes present on a web page. So we will first create an object description for a checkboxe and then get all the checkboxes from the page

Dim obj_ChkDesc

Set obj_ChkDesc=Description.Create
obj_ChkDesc(“html tag”).value = “INPUT”
obj_ChkDesc(“type”).value = “checkbox”

Dim allCheckboxes, singleCheckBox

Set allCheckboxes = Browse(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).ChildObjects(obj_ChkDesc)

For each singleCheckBox in allCheckboxes

singleCheckBox.Set “ON”

Next

The above code will check all the check boxes present on the page. To get all the child objects we need to specify an object description i.e. we can’t use the string arguments that will be discussed later in the 2nd way of using the programming description.

Possible Operation on Description Object

Consider the below code for all the solutions
Dim obj_ChkDesc

Set obj_ChkDesc=Description.Create
obj_ChkDesc(“html tag”).value = “INPUT”
obj_ChkDesc(“type”).value = “checkbox”

Q: How to get the no. of description defined in a collection
A: obj_ChkDesc.Count ‘Will return 2 in our case

Q: How to remove a description from the collection
A: obj_ChkDesc.remove “html tag” ‘would delete the html tag property from the collection

Q: How do I check if property exists or not in the collection?
A: The answer is that it’s not possible. Because whenever we try to access a property which is not defined its automatically added to the collection. The only way to determine is to check its value that is use a if statement “if obj_ChkDesc(“html tag”).value = empty then”.

Q: How to browse through all the properties of a properties collection?
A: Two ways
1st:
For each desc in obj_ChkDesc
Name=desc.Name
Value=desc.Value
RE = desc.regularexpression
Next
2nd:
For i=0 to obj_ChkDesc.count - 1
Name= obj_ChkDesc(i).Name
Value= obj_ChkDesc(i).Value
RE = obj_ChkDesc(i).regularexpression
Next

2. By giving the description in form of the string arguments.

This is a more commonly used method for Descriptive Programming.
You can describe an object directly in a statement by specifying property:=value pairs describing the object instead of specifying an object’s
name. The general syntax is:

TestObject("PropertyName1:=PropertyValue1", "..." , "PropertyNameX:=PropertyValueX")

TestObject—the test object class could be WebEdit, WebRadioGroup etc….

PropertyName:=PropertyValue—the test object property and its value. Each property:=value pair should be separated by commas and quotation
marks. Note that you can enter a variable name as the property value if you want to find an object based on property values you retrieve during a run session.

Consider the HTML Code given below:

<--!input type="”textbox”" name="”txt_Name”"-->
<--!input type="”radio”" name="”txt_Name”"-->

Now to refer to the textbox the statement would be as given below

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebEdit(“Name:=txt_Name”,”html tag:=INPUT”).set “Test”

And to refer to the radio button the statement would be as given below

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebRadioGroup(“Name:=txt_Name”,”html tag:=INPUT”).set “Test”

If we refer to them as a web element then we will have to distinguish between the 2 using the index property

Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebElement(“Name:=txt_Name”,”html tag:=INPUT”,”Index:=0”).set “Test” ‘ Refers to the textbox
Browser(“Browser”).Page(“Page”).WebElement(“Name:=txt_Name”,”html tag:=INPUT”,”Index:=1”).set “Test” ‘ Refers to the radio button
Some Useful Tips with QTP
Sharing some of the useful tips on QTP I used while working and found from sqaforums.

How to add a constant number in a datatable?
This is more to do with MS excel then QTP!! but useful to know because at times it becomes frustrating to the novices.
Just append ' to the number
Ex: if you wish to enter 1234567 in datatable then write it as '1234567

How can i check if a parameter exists in DataTable or not?
The best way would be to use the below code:
on error resume next
val=DataTable("ParamName",dtGlobalSheet)
if err.number<> 0 then
'Parameter does not exist
else
'Parameter exists
end if

How can i check if a checkpoint passes or not?
chk_PassFail = Browser(...).Page(...).WebEdit(...).Check (Checkpoint("Check1"))
if chk_PassFail then
MsgBox "Check Point passed"
else MsgBox "Check Point failed"
end if

My test fails due to checkpoint failing, Can i validate a checkpoint without my test failing due to checpoint failure?
Reporter.Filter = rfDisableAll 'Disables all the reporting stuff
chk_PassFail = Browser(...).Page(...).WebEdit(...).Check (Checkpoint("Check1"))
Reporter.Filter = rfEnableAll 'Enable all the reporting stuff
if chk_PassFail then
MsgBox "Check Point passed"
else
MsgBox "Check Point failed"
end if

What is the difference between an Action and a function?
Action is a thing specific to QTP while functions are a generic thing which is a feature of VB Scripting. Action can have a object repository associated with it while a function can't. A function is just lines of code with some/none parameters and a single return value while an action can have more than one output parameters.

Where to use function or action?
Well answer depends on the scenario. If you want to use the OR feature then you have to go for Action only. If the functionality is not about any automation script i.e. a function like getting a string between to specific characters, now this is something not specific to QTP and can be done on pure VB Script, so this should be done in a function and not an action. Code specific to QTP can also be put into an function using DP. Decision of using function/action depends on what any one would be comfortable using in a given situation.

When to use a Recovery Scenario and when to us on error resume next?
Recovery scenarios are used when you cannot predict at what step the error can occur or when you know that error won't occur in your QTP script but could occur in the world outside QTP, again the example would be "out of paper", as this error is caused by printer device driver. "On error resume next" should be used when you know if an error is expected and dont want to raise it, you may want to have different actions depending upon the error that occurred. Use err.number & err.description to get more details about the error.

How to use environment variable?
A simple defintion could be... it is a variable which can be used across the reusable actions and is not limited to one reusable action.
There are two types of environment variables:
1. User-defined
2. Built-in
We can retrieve the value of any environment variable. But we can set the value of only user-defined environment variables.

To set the value of a user-defined environment variable:
Environment (VariableName) = NewValue

To retrieve the value of a loaded environment variable:
CurrValue = Environment (VariableName)

Example
The following example creates a new internal user-defined variable named MyVariable with a value of 10, and then retrieves the variable value and stores it in the MyValue variable.

Environment.Value("MyVariable")=10
MyValue=Environment.Value("MyVariable")
Posted by Ankur