I strongly dislike waiting. This applies at the drugstore,
the DMV, or any other place. I patiently accept that this happens, however,
since life is just like that. I do try to avoid it whenever reasonably
possible, especially at work.
Which explains why I try to never use a Wait()
statement in QTP. Wait seems like a cop-out; rather than attempt to find that
one property that indicates the state of my application, I’ll put pick a time
and hope for the best. My linear-thinking, anal-retentive mind just can’t do it
unless I have tried every other means imaginable (and unimaginable). It’s just
how I am wired.
So, how does this relate to my title? Basically, I am often
looking at Page/Browser object properties to determine my application state.
However, I’ve noticed lately that the GetROProperty
Function simply doesn’t work reliably. Here’s and example of what I mean:
With Browser("RE").Page("GEOMAP")
If
Instr(UCase(.GetROProperty("url")), "GEOMAP") > 0 Then
.WebArea("alt:="
& DataTable.Value("A", dtLocalSheet)).Click
Do
Browser("RE").ClearDialogs()
Loop Until Browser("hwnd:="
& Environment("BrowserHandle")).Page("url:=" & Environment("RE_Web")
& "\home-listings/default.asp?state=NC").Exist(1)
If Instr(Browser("hwnd:=" & Environment("BrowserHandle")).Page("url:=" & Environment("RE_Web")
& "\home-listings/default.asp?state=NC").GetROProperty(“title”), “Test”) > 0 Then
<do
something>
End If
.Sync
End If
End With
In this snippet, we are trying to determine if we are on the
correct page using the .GetROProperty(“url”). Sometimes this works, and
sometimes it doesn’t. We later use a loop to determine if we are on the correct
page post clicking on the correct WebArea. If we are,
we use a custom solution to deal with popup dialogs and clear them all. We then
attempt to access the title of the page to determine if we should do something
else. Sometimes, even the descriptive programming in these cases won’t work
correctly 100% of the time.
So what do you do? I am glad you asked! Normally, I rely on
the Page.Object to determine my current state. This
is a reference of the XMLDocument under the page, and
is therefore usually more “up to the minute” than the functions that QTP
provides natively. Using the above code, I could get at anything I could under
the GetROProperty, and some I can’t. Easiest thing to
do is use object spy in QTP to determine what’s available (much as you might
for GetROProperty), but I also consult an XMLDocument reference to see if there is anything else
there I can use. An example of how I would use the XMLDocument
might be:
Browser("hwnd:="
& Environment("BrowserHandle")).Page("url:=" & Environment("RE_Web")
& "\home-listings/default.asp?state=NC").Object.title
This method seems to work much more reliably that GetROProperty most of the time, and after all, who likes to
wait?