Wrapping The GUI


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Introduction


Contents

Introduction

The Interface Wrapper
The interface to an application will be a point of interaction for a large number of test-interactions. Whilst the majority of inputs will be applied by low level interactions querying of specific information and activation of commands will also be present in mid level interactions. In addition high level interactions may need to use the GUI interface to investigate the underlying state of the system.  For example by running and capturing reports or querying information on a large population of entities.

The large number of places from which the GUI will be accessed mean that it is generally a good idea to create a library of operations that can be used by the rest of the testware.

The Interface Wrapper

As a general principle test interactions should not interact directly with the GUI. The interaction should use a facility provided by the wrapper. This is because there are likely to be very few if any operations on the GUI that are only used once and so direct interaction creates redundancy.

The features that a wrapper should provide will vary from system to system but general classes of features that may be applicable include operations to:

  • Set individual fields.
  • Invoke individual commands.
  • Read the status / values of individual elements.
  • Read useful high level collections of information from the interface.
  • Navigate to particular points in the GUI structure.
  • Detect the presence of specific conditions on the display.
  • Snapshot the status of the GUI.
  • Identify changes between GUI snapshots.

The diagram illustrates this.