[swtbot-dev] Identifying and finding widgets for both finder and test re

[Mickael Istria <mickael.istria@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,

I had a few time to think about test recording, and the underlying problem we discussed with Ketan at EclipseCon: identifying widgets that are the source of events. As far as I remember, a basic solution would be to set IDs on widget that SWTBot could resolve, but it requires the developer to think about putting IDs on widgets while developing the UI, and it is not a common practice.
Then I thought about a resolver based on XPath-like widget identification. For example an _expression_ like bot.find(//Composite[0]/Group[1]/Button[0]) would resolve to the 1st button of 2nd Group of 1st composite in current shell. I think such a resolver would be easy to write for both SWTBot finder and Test Recorder and would provide an easy and powerful solution. Moreover, this is something people will understand even more naturally with the rise of XWT (identifying a widget in an XML description with XPath sounds natural).

What do you think about that?
And, once we get this working, we could go ahead with expressions like //Composite[0]/Group[text="myGroup"]/Button[text="Ok"] that would provide even more flexibility.

Is there a ControlResolver-like interface already existing with methods:
* Control find(Shell shell, String controlId)
* String generateId(Control control)
which could be used by both finder and resolver?

--

Mickael Istria
R&D Engineer

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