Technology limitation warning
Technology limitation warnings usually have their origin in an incomplete instrumentation. It is recommended to follow the below-listed link before contacting the Ranorex support team.
These limitation warnings are addressed in Interfaces & connectivity > Technology instrumentation > General troubleshooting.
Identify UI-elements with Ranorex
Ranorex tracks, identifies and stores UI-elements in a two-step process. Basically, UI-elements are referenced by an inner representation called repository items. Each repository item abstracts the corresponding UI-element with a role and optional capabilities. The position within the GUI is described by a special RanoreXPath specifier which uniquely identifies each UI-element.
Read about UI-elements in the fundamental chapter Ranorex Studio fundamentals > Repository > Introduction
If you are interested in more advanced information according to this topic, please refer to Ranorex Studio advanced > UI-elements > Introduction
Ranorex support data-driven testing
Ranorex support data-driven testing, which is an advanced key concept of Ranorex. Ranorex supports data connectors for simple data tables, CSV-files, Excel files and SQL database files.
Data-driven testing is introduced and explained in Ranorex Studio advanced > Data-driven testing > Introduction
Speed up your Excel-based data connector
Especially with large files, the performance of Microsoft’s default file format for excel spreadsheets is getting poor. This weakness might also affect your data-driven test execution. For performance improvements we recommend to use the binary file format (xlsb) instead of the default one (xlsx). Simply save your Excel spreadsheet with the extension “xlsb” and assign it to your excel data source.
More information on this topic can be found in > Ranorex Studio advanced > Data-driven testing > Data & data management (#Excel data connector)
Items cannot be found during Ranorex test execution
More information on this topic can be found in Hands-on application topics > Best practices > Fix ‘element not found’ error
Extend recordings with user-specified code actions
You can easily extend standard recordings with user specific code actions by converting existing action items or by adding a new user code action item to a recording.
More information on this topic can be found in Ranorex Studio fundamentals > Actions > User code actions
Difference between Adapter and Element
In Ranorex, UI-elements are mapped against an inner representation which is called a repository item. UI-elements are described by roles, capabilities, attributes & values and the RanoreXPath specification. These important topics are addressed in corresponding chapters:
If you want yourself get familiar with this important topic, read Ranorex Studio advanced > UI-elements > Introduction
Also, go to Ranorex Studio advanced > RanoreXPath > Introduction to review the advanced concept of RanoreXPath.
Note Formerly, the term adapter (aka adapter-type) was used to describe the internal representation type of a UI-element. This definition has now been replaced by a more consistent specification distinguishing between roles, capabilities, attributes, and values.
The term was also used as part of the RanoreXPath specification which has now been replaced by the term ‘role‘.
Trigger Ranorex tests from an existing test or build environment
The result of a Ranorex test automation project is always an executable file. The generated *.exe can easily be started from other environments supporting command line execution.
Running tests without Ranorex Studio at command level is introduced and explained in Ranorex Studio fundamentals > Test suite > Running tests without Ranorex Studio
Run my tests on machines where I am not allowed to install Ranorex
It is possible to run automated tests on runtime machines without Ranorex Installation.
The topic is addressed in Interfaces & connectivity > XCOPY deployment.
Use Ranorex libraries within Visual Studio
That’s one of the big advantages of using Ranorex. You’re able to use your existing development environment to develop Ranorex based test automation code. Additionally, the code generated by the Ranorex Recorder or Ranorex Repository can easily be integrated into your Visual Studio projects.
The topic is addressed in Interfaces & connectivity > Visual Studio integration
Unexpected dialogs and popup windows during test automation
Ranorex provides the dedicated class PopupWatcher to watch for and to handle popup windows. By using this class, not only simply click actions to close popup dialogs can be called. Even more complex scenarios can be handled in custom callback routines being called at the time the popup appears.
Read more about how to handle popup dialogs with Ranorex in Hands-on application topics > Code examples
Test Silverlight applications with Ranorex
Ensure that your Silverlight application does not run in window-less-mode, i.e. set the Windowless property of the Silverlight HTML object to false. Find more information about window-less mode on the following site: msdn.microsoft.com
Automate a webpage without moving the mouse pointer
Use the PerformClick instead of the normal Clickmethod when working with web adapters likeDivTag, Inputor Link.
This topic is addressed in Ranorex Studio fundamentals > Actions > Invoking actions
System requirements for developing and running Ranorex tests
The following link to our online documentation shows what is needed to develop or to simply run Ranorex tests.
Ranorex system requirements are listed in Ranorex Studio system details > System requirements
Known incompatibilities with other software
In general, there are no known incompatibilities. However, some antivirus or security software blocks certain Ranorex functionality. Consequently, if you experience problems with your automation and are running antivirus or security software, we recommend temporarily switching that software off for a test run.
Technology instrumentation
Testing of CEF application
When testing CEF applications, you may come across a technology limitation warning. Here are potential causes and solutions for these technology warnings.
Another application is already listening on the remote debugging port
UI elements in your AUT can’t be identified because another application is blocking the remote debugging port (e.g. Chrome DevTools). Close the blocking program and restart the AUT.
Solution:
Ranorex Studio normally tries to close the blocking application automatically. In some cases, like for the Chrome Developer Tools, this doesn’t work. In this case, simply close all applications that may be connected to the AUT at the remote debugging port you specified.
If this fails, you can also try to change the remote debugging port number for the AUT.
Remote debugging is not available
UI elements in your CEF AUT can’t be identified because the remote debugging port isn’t enabled in your AUT or can’t be found.
Solution:
Make sure you’ve activated the remote debugging port correctly (i.e. in source code if required) and that no other applications are using it. If you’ve set the remote debugging port number to something else than 8081, try resetting it to this value.