VLWeb - Identifiable elements in the rendered HTML

jyoung · Post by **jyoung** » Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:38 am

I would really like there to be identifiable elements in the rendered HTML.

The main case for this is for automated end-to-end and regression testing.

Currently there is no way to identify an individual element for introspection by UI testing tools.

For example, this element

Code: Select all

<input spellcheck="false" class="vl-input-hideclear" type="text" tabindex="0" style="padding: 0px; white-space: pre; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); position: absolute; overflow: auto; box-sizing: border-box; border-style: none; outline: none; border-width: 0px; cursor: text; resize: none; left: 0px; width: 217px; height: 21px; text-align: left; font-family: Roboto, verdana; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; top: 0px; color: rgb(48, 48, 48);">

represents the Search element in this screen shot.

: search.PNG (32.65 KiB) Viewed 37288 times

It would be nice to have the LANSA Control Name (or Indentifier) included in the HTML as either a class selector or as a data attribute. That would allow the control elements to be found with most modern UI testing tools.

We could then have a test that states something along these lines:

Go to this url
Find element #WK_SEARCH (done by using class selector or data attribute that contains field identifier)
Type 'yancey' into element
Find element #SEARCH_BUTTON (done by using class selector or data attribute that contains control name)
Click element
Find element #DATA_LIST (done by using class selector or data attribute that contains control name)
Assert that 'Yancey, .....' is in #DATALIST

You can see something like this in Cypress.io but I don't think the tool matters as long as the elements are identifiable!

On a side note, this could be small step in the pursuit of a CD/CI pipeline, which could (hopefully) include a command line tool to interact with Visual LANSA without going through the UI (to trigger things like check out / readonly of lists, compliles, creating deployment packages etc.).