If suppose there two or more controls(eg. Buttons) with exactly same properties on a screen and while recording user actions if one of the controls was clicked, how can the appropriate control be identified and replay back the same click by overcoming the ambiguity of that control?
Scenario:
Two 'cancel' buttons without an automation id or any useful assistive properties and let's say their hierarchy(ancestors) are same.
Replay script is being executed in UFT.
If UFT creates the objects, either via Record or by adding the object to repository, it will automatically add an ordinal identifier. This is a numeric value that selects the controls from the set of controls that match the (rest of the) description. The ordinal is usually based on the placement of the control (starting on the top left) and may not be the most robust way to identify the control.
It's probably better to use Visual Relations Identifier (VRI) which allows describing the control in relation to another control. This is similar to how a human would describe the button, e.g. "The cancel button to the left of the 'are you sure' text".
Related
I need to have multiple selection in my report filters. Is it possible?
I used list box multiple selection from Input Controls for the same purpose. But the User needs to search for the input control to open and select as it does not open by default. Can we make input control to be seen in our Reports all the time when a user opens the Report?
If yes, How?
Thanks
Niki
As far as I know, you can't force a document to open with the Input Control pane visible. If I'm not mistaken, whether the left pane is visible or collapsed and which tab is showing, is either document or user related, but you can't set it as a document property.
The state of the left pane (visibility and selection) is saved in the user profile. You can see the value by looking at the property SI_DATA.INTERACTIVE_EDITING_VIEWER_USR_PROFILE.CDZ_VIEW_leftPaneSel. Use the Query Builder (http(s)://<application server>:<port>/AdminTools) and run the query below to retrieve the value (in this case for the user Administrator).
select si_data
from ci_systemobjects
where si_name = 'Administrator'
and si_kind = 'User'
The only way you could manipulate the value is through the BusinessObjects Enterprise SDK. But remember that - due to being part of the user profile - changing this impacts all documents the user opens. Moreover, as soon as the user either hides the left pane or selects a different tab, the value will be overwritten. There is no way you could prevent this from happening (at least not to my knowledge).
One possible alternative, is to limit the user interface for that specific user / user group. In BI 4 (I'm not exactly sure from which version on this feature is available), you can turn off certain aspects of the Web Intelligence user interface.
Doing so, you could make the Input Control tab the only one available in the left pane. Granted, it's not what you're aiming for, and it's an application setting, so the impact is on user(group) level, not on document, but it might be an alternative, depending on the circumstances.
You can customise the Web Intelligence interface by right-clicking a user group in the CMC and selecting Customization from the context menu.
I have my form with a menu bar and space underneath to display my controls. One of the buttons in my menu bar is suppose to be a print button that prints a graph that's currently in a User Control I display in the form. If the graph was on the form in the print button's eventhandler I could just simply call
graph.printing.print(true)
which isn't going to work in my case since the graph is in the control and not the form.
How do I communicate with a User Control from the containing form and access or pass its variables when needed? I also have a status bar on the bottom of the form which would also need to get updated from the User Control, but I'll be able to deal with that if I got help with just this one part. Please bear in mind, I also have another User Control I'm going to add to the form which will also contain a graph which will need the same treatment as the other graph on the first control when the print button is pressed. I plan on swapping these two out so I have one form displaying one control at a time.
I got this idea from this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/18191630/2567273 but after further research I can't find anyone asking about the actual communication process between a form and the control it contains.
I think this answer is close to what I'm looking for, but I think it's leading me down the path to using panels instead of User Controls.
After typing this I noticed the closest answer to my question may be this, but that question has the child raising events and the parent responding while I have the parent raising the event and the parent has to get information from the child.
One way to think about this is Roles. Presumably you built this UserControl to handle the management of the data related to the graphs. As such you can think of them in the Role of a Graphs Specialist . Once you do that, printing them is actually just one more thing it should perhaps do.
The form on the other hand, is not special just because it happens to get receive the command from the user to print. Its role in this might simply to be to know which usercontrol to contact and which method to invoke:
Sub PrintGraphMenuClick....
Select Case something ' determinant as to which UC to contact
Case operation.Foo
ucFoo.PrintGraph
Case operation.Bar
ucBar.PrintGraph
Other menu options like Clear, NewGraph, Save and whatever else there is somewhat the same way. The Form's Role here may be to receive the command from the user and pass it along to the right control, invoking the correct right method and passing the correct parameters - that is not a trivial task.
Of course, rather than a MainMenu, the usercontols could alternatively implement a ContextMenu and even receive those commands directly.
Very often offloading an operation to something else results in so many properties, filenames, streams etc having to be moved from here to there that it becomes burdensome. In this case it is not like the MainForm has some special ability regarding printers that the UserControl cannot handle.
There is only one right solution:
1) Add an event to your user control.
2) Raise the event when the particular "thing" happens in the user control.
3) Attach a handler to the event in Form code.
4) Add code to update the bottom bar in the event handler.
I had a question about Dialogs in VB.NET. I am working on a point of sale program, and at one point during a sale, I have a few windows that pop up. For example, a user will go into a sale that is window A. In window A, they have the option of entering products, etc., and if they choose a 'repair' product, it opens window B, allowing them to choose options. In window B, there is a button that pops up window C that allows them to attach products TO the repair. My issue is with window B opening window C.
Because I open window B as a Dialog (in order to check if DialogResult.OK is true), any window I open with B is non-touchable, as B is a Dialog and requires attention before going to any other windows/forms.
My question is - is there any way to still use a dialog, but allow for manipulating other open forms while the dialog is up, and if not, what would be the best way to check if the user selected OK, or cancelled out of the window?
The only solution I can think of right now would be to open window C as a dialogue as well (it's actually a UserControl, and I'm still trying to find where in the code it's actually getting openned/called), or to create a variable that is passed in to the form, and then passed back out when it's closed, that basically sets a flag to either continue or cancel...
Any advice/ideas??
If I were to explain this using code, this answer would be very long, so instead I'm going to give you a high level overview.
.Show() vs .ShowDialog()
The link below will take you off to Microsofts website to explain the technical differences between these two. However in laymans terms, .ShowDialog() will create the form where it is the only window allowed to have focus in the application. Forms that are called in this instance are hierarchical, in that if you open them in order of 1,2,4,3 then they must be closed in the 3,4,2,1 order. Forms that are opened with just .Show() can be focused at any time.
How to: Display Modal and Modeless Windows Forms
Form.FormBorderStyle property
This property controls how the OS will display the window. The different options under this selection changes the way the window behaves. Depending on the options that are chosen you can make a window that only has a close button on it, or it may not even have a title bar at all. Setting this option to None will take away all controls of the form and only leave you with the Me.ClientArea to work with. When you want a completely custom GUI, this is how you do it but you have to implement your own controls for everything, closing the form, size handles, the ability to move the form on the screen, etc...
Form.FormBorderStyle Property
Passing data between forms
When someone asks how to pass data back and forth between forms, they are usually talking about modeless forms that were created using .Show(). The most common thing I see on SO is to use the tag property of an object (a form is an object that has this property too) to pass data back and forth. While I won't say this is a bad practice, I will recommend creating public properties on your forms. These can be set from a separate form and you can perform additional actions when setting the values (be careful though, this way of doing things isn't thread safe). If you are using a Modeless form as though it were a Modal form, then you can simply override the .Dispose property to return a value or you can create a method named DialogResult that will return the value you need. The caveat to using a DialogResult or similar method is that if the form has been disposed then you can't access the value you wanted to return.
You can use myNewForm.Show(Me) for the Window you want to be shown as a dialog. This will show myNewForm as a child of the current form, but lets you interact with the current form.
When deleting records within the platform, this action is not reversible via the front end. Is there a way to allow users to remove a record from their view without actually deleting the record?
You can simulate recycle bin functionality within Archer GRC by adding a record permission field that grants read access to "Everyone". If read access is no longer required then an editor of the record can go in and change "Everyone" to a group called "Recycle Bin."
Please note that if there are other record permission fields in the application, users or groups may still have access if they are selected in those fields. Perhaps You can set up a dropdown status field for the user to select "Recycle Bin" and use this condition for automatic record permissions to revoke permission to the record depending on the requirements or workflow of the application.
Solution shared by Igritte might be somewhat confusing for end users.
End user will see greyed out "Delete" button in the top toolbar, but he has to select "Recycle Bin" in the form. This solution was not accepted by my business owner at some point.
As a work around for "Soft delete", I wrote a custom object overriding "Delete" button functionality.
1. User doesn't have delete access to the record, so JavaScript code will make "Delete" button look like active and available.
2. Once the button is clicked, custom object will populate value in the
hidden value list and simulate the click on the "Save" button.
Update: Note that Custom object needs to hide the value list first once the page is loaded. Here you will need to use a JavaScript and do the following: [a] locate the value list DOM object and [b] set display attribute to none. I used jQuery library to do both. This way your value list is not displayed, but you still can use it to control data driven events.
3. With hidden value populated and submitted, record permission will hide this record from the end user.
Note that custom object hides one value list on the layout as well.
If for some reason JavaScript doesn't load properly, user simply will not be able to click on the grayed out "Delete" button.
Update: Hidden value list can be populated by custom object using JavaScript code as well. You need to identify the form tag "input" in HTML code of the page and set attribute "value" to the desired state. I used jQuery library to do this as well.
I have this solution in production working fine with IE11, FF and Chrome.
I can't share the code, but with WC3Schools JavaScript guides and 4 hours you can write and test it yourself with very little JavaScript skills.
Sometimes you have to use custom objects when you want to get a user-friendly solution of not available functionality.
Good luck!
In my GWT project, I'm trying to get it so two DialogBoxes can pass information between each other. One of them holds a MapWidget, and when a button is pressed in the other DialogBox, the position information is received from that other DialogBox's MapWidget. Does anyone have any tips for how I should coordinate between having two different DialogBoxes show up? Should I wrap the code for the two in a Composite? Furthermore, is there an example anywhere of dealing with two DialogBoxes at once in GWT? For example, if I click outside of the two boxes, both should be dismissed. I'm wondering if there's a way to keep both of them in focus at once, so I can switch between the two without causing either to disappear.
Sharing Data Between Dialog Boxes
In my opinion, the "correct" way to do this would be to implement some sort of MVP structure in the application so that a presenter manages the view (DialogBoxes, among other things) and knows how to pass simple data to the view for it to display (the presenter would handle the MapWidget data, the view would take care of displaying it on the DOM).
However, if you're looking for a quicker/more simpler approach, you have a couple of options (which you choose really depends on the application structure):
Create a Composite, as you mentioned, that knows how to pass the necessary data back and forth. By having the Composite manage the data object and tell the two DialogBoxes how to display it, you are actually approaching an MVP architecture within your Composite.
Subclass DialogBox into a class that contains a HandlerManager (sometimes used as an "Event Bus") that fires events when the button is pressed. You can create events that are designed to pass data back and forth between the two DialogBoxes (even make them type-safe with type parameters). See this StackOverflow question for details on using a HandlerManager. The MVP article, linked above, also has some good information on using an event bus.
Model-View-Presenter is a tried-and-true method of structuring an application that results in more testable code, better project structure, and can help guide you when making decisions like this. I strongly recommend checking it out if you haven't already.
Sharing Auto-Hide Functionality
GWT's PopupPanel (on which DialogBox is based) offers a method addAutoHidePartner(Element) which is describe thusly:
Mouse events that occur within an autoHide partner will not hide a panel set to autoHide.
So, you can create two auto-hiding DialogBoxes that only close when you click outside both of them (e.g., they do not close when you click within either of the boxes) with the following code:
// Create the dialog boxes
DialogBox dbox1 = new DialogBox(true, false);
DialogBox dbox2 = new DialogBox(true, false);
// Set some visual options
dbox1.setPopupPosition(10, 10);
dbox2.setPopupPosition(200, 10);
dbox1.setAnimationEnabled(true);
dbox2.setAnimationEnabled(false);
// Set the dialog boxes' caption and content
dbox1.setHTML("Dialog Box 1");
dbox2.setHTML("Dialog Box 2");
dbox1.setWidget(new HTML("This is the first dialog box."));
dbox2.setWidget(new HTML("This is the second dialog box."));
// Making dobx2 a partner of dbox1 means clicking
// in dbox2 won't cause dbox1 to close
dbox1.addAutoHidePartner(dbox2.getElement());
// Similarly, setting dbox1 as a partner of dbox2 means
// clicking in dbox1 won't cause dbox2 to close
dbox2.addAutoHidePartner(dbox1.getElement());
// Show the dialog boxes
dbox1.show();
dbox2.show();
You can interact with either of the dialog boxes without the other closing. Omit the appropriate call to setAutoHidePartner if you only want a one-way partnership.