专利汇可以提供METHOD AND SYSTEM TO IDENTIFY GUI OBJECTS FOR NON-MARKUP-LANGUAGE-PRESENTED APPLICATIONS专利检索,专利查询,专利分析的服务。并且One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates identifying objects rendered on a graphic user interface (GUI) in a non-markup-language-presented software application. During operation, the system receives a non-markup-language-presented application at a computer. The system first selects a set of attributes that uniquely distinguish a target GUI object. The system then identifies a set of target GUI objects in the application, wherein a respective GUI object is not represented in a markup language in the received application. Next, the system represents the target GUI objects in the application with a markup-language-based structure, wherein each target GUI object is associated with a corresponding markup-language node in the structure.,下面是METHOD AND SYSTEM TO IDENTIFY GUI OBJECTS FOR NON-MARKUP-LANGUAGE-PRESENTED APPLICATIONS专利的具体信息内容。
What is claimed is:
This application hereby claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119 to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/143,067, filed on 7 Jan. 2009, entitled “METHOD AND MECHANISM TO IDENTIFY GUI OBJECTS FOR NON-MARKUP LANGUAGE PRESENTED APPLICATIONS,” by inventor Cheng Wang, Kevin Walsh and Pascal Sero (Attorney Docket No. OR08-48801-PRO), and to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/134,070, filed on 7 Jan. 2009, entitled “METHOD AND SYSTEM TO AUTOMATICALLY GENERATE GUI OBJECT ADDRESSING QUERIES,” by inventor Cheng Wang, Kevin Walsh and Pascal Sero (Attorney Docket No. OR08-48901-PRO).
1. Field
The present disclosure relates to GUI object identification. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to identifying GUI objects for non-markup-language-presented applications.
2. Related Art
As the demand for high-quality software increases, software testing plays an increasingly critical role in the software industry. In order to test graphical user interface (GUI) of a software application, a tester usually has to manually repeat actions on the GUI. This process can be tedious and costly. Ever since the automated GUI testing tool was introduced, time and effort spent on software testing have been greatly reduced. However, one of the key barriers for large-scale deployment of automated GUI testing tools is how to identify GUI objects quickly and correctly, especially for non-markup-language-presented applications, or so-called “native applications.”
A GUI object can be identified by its attributes. An application that is not presented on a display based on a markup language, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), is called a non-markup-language-presented application. Conventionally, identification of GUI objects for non-markup-language-presented applications involves manually documenting attributes or properties of each GUI object. The attributes of each GUI object is then stored in an object repository. During the GUI-object identification process, a target GUI object can be identified by comparing the attributes of the target object with the attributes stored in the object repository.
However, these conventional GUI-object identification methods have several limitations. First, because no standard has been established for building the object repository, different implementations follow different rules to generate the object repository. The internal organization of different object repositories can be complex and implementation-dependent. Searching or addressing objects in the object repository can be difficult due to the lack of standard internal organization. Since a GUI object can only be identified by comparing its attributes, it is difficult to implement complex object-addressing functions such as addressing by the object hierarchy. In addition, the indispensable object repository increases the complexity of tool migration and maintenance. For example, with any GUI object change in the software application, the object repository often needs to be updated accordingly. When a tester applies an object identification result to another application, he or she typically has to first adapt all the related object repository files to the new application. As the number and size of repository files increase, the maintenance cost increases, and the maintenance itself becomes more difficult.
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates identifying objects rendered on a graphic user interface (GUI) in a non-markup-language-presented software application. During operation, the system receives a non-markup-language-presented application at a computer. The system first selects a set of attributes that uniquely distinguish a target GUI object. The system then identifies a set of target GUI objects in the application, wherein a respective GUI object is not represented in a markup language in the received application. Next, the system represents the target GUI objects in the application with a markup-language-based structure, wherein each target GUI object is associated with a corresponding markup-language node in the structure.
In a variation on this embodiment, the system generates an addressing query for a respective node to be identified in the represented markup-language structure. The system further identifies a GUI object based at least on the association between the target GUI object and its corresponding markup-language node by issuing the addressing query to the markup-language structure.
In a variation on this embodiment, the system records user actions performed on the target GUI objects.
In a variation on this embodiment, the non-markup-language-presented application is not rendered on the GUI based on a markup language.
In a variation on this embodiment, the system represents the set of target GUI objects by first determining a context root for the application. Next, the system converts the context root to a markup-language root node. The system then forms a hierarchy of nodes that can be queried. To do so, the system recursively traverses the target GUI objects and converts a respective target GUI object to a markup-language node.
In a further variation, the conversion of the target GUI object to a markup-language node involves naming the node with the name of the GUI object and setting attributes for the node based at least on class information and properties of the target GUI object.
In a further variation, the target GUI object is a container type object that contains other GUI objects.
In a variation on this embodiment, the system builds an association map which maps a GUI object to its corresponding markup-language node.
The following description is presented to enable any person skilled in the art to make and use the invention, and is provided in the context of a particular application and its requirements. Various modifications to the disclosed embodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the general principles defined herein may be applied to other embodiments and applications without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Thus, the present invention is not limited to the embodiments shown, but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the claims.
In order to automatically test GUI of software applications by a computer, a human tester's actions are usually recorded first and later played back by the computer. The major hurdle in testing a non-markup-language-presented application is that the computer must identify which action the tester performs and, more importantly, on which GUI object the tester performs an action. Hence, a GUI object identification method for non-markup-language-presented applications, or so-called native applications, is introduced.
Embodiments of the present invention provide a method for identifying GUI objects in a non-markup-language-presented application which can be any native application, such as a Java™ (a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.) application or a WIN32 application, which is not rendered based on a markup language, such as XML. Unlike the conventional methods, the current invention does not require building an object repository based on GUI object attributes. Instead, embodiments of the present invention utilize powerful markup languages and the corresponding query functions for identifying GUI objects in a non-markup-language-presented application.
In one embodiment, the GUI-object identification process can be divided into two phases, a distinguishing phase and an identifying phase. During the distinguishing phase, the system distinguishes a respective GUI object from other objects in the application and convert the GUI objects into nodes in a structured markup-language document. The system further record user operations on the GUI objects in a script, generate corresponding addressing queries to the markup-language nodes associated with those GUI objects, and record these addressing queries. Results from this phase, together with the addressing queries, are used to identify a target GUI object during the identifying phase. During the identifying phase, the script is played back to emulate the recorded user operations, and the corresponding address queries are executed against a markup-language document containing nodes associated with GUI objects. This way, the system can identify the GUI objects that have been previously operated on by the user, and repeat the same operations in the play-back.
A GUI object may have many attributes. However, not all the attributes are necessary for distinguishing it from other objects in the application. For example, the coordinate attribute of a GUI object is typically not selected, because the position of an object often changes. During the distinguishing phase, a set of attributes are selected for uniquely distinguishing a respective GUI object. This attribute set can then be queried in the query language.
In addition, not all GUI objects in an application need to be identified. For example, certain GUI objects are only related to the layout of the application, and thus require no user action. In one embodiment, a subset of the GUI objects in the application is chosen as the identification target. These objects are considered meaningful objects on which a user may perform GUI actions.
Subsequently, the selected GUI objects in the application are represented in a markup-language structure.
The GUI-object identification process represents each target GUI object as a markup-language node in the markup-language document d.
Note that a container-type GUI object may be present in a non-markup-language-presented application. A container-type object contains other GUI objects, which can also be container-type. In order to identify GUI objects in the container, the system recursively traverses all target GUI objects.
After all target GUI objects in the original non-markup-language-presented application are converted to the markup-language-presented hierarchy, and the association map is built, each markup-language node (and the corresponding GUI object) can be correctly and uniquely identified by the generated addressing query. During GUI testing, the system records user actions on GUI objects performed by a tester. During the identifying phase, the system identifies target GUI objects on which the tester has previously performed user action and “replays” the recorded actions.
The distinguishing phase is complete after successful generation of the addressing queries for each markup-language node, which corresponds to target GUI objects on which the user has performed some actions in the native application.
The foregoing descriptions of embodiments of the present invention have been presented for purposes of illustration and description only. They are not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the present invention to the forms disclosed. Accordingly, many modifications and variations will be apparent to practitioners skilled in the art. Additionally, the above disclosure is not intended to limit the present invention. The scope of the present invention is defined by the appended claims.
The data structures and code described in this detailed description are typically stored on a computer-readable storage medium, which may be any device or medium that can store code and/or data for use by a computer system. This includes, but is not limited to, volatile memory, non-volatile memory, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), magnetic and optical storage devices such as disk drives, magnetic tape, CDs (compact discs), DVDs (digital versatile discs or digital video discs), or other media capable of storing computer-readable media now known or later developed.
The methods and processes described in the detailed description section can be embodied as code and/or data, which can be stored in a computer-readable storage medium as described above. When a computer system reads and executes the code and/or data stored on the computer-readable storage medium, the computer system performs the methods and processes embodied as data structures and code and stored within the computer-readable storage medium.
Furthermore, the methods and processes described below can be included in hardware modules. For example, the hardware modules can include, but are not limited to, ASICs, FPGAs, and other programmable-logic devices now known or later developed. When the hardware modules are activated, the hardware modules perform the methods and processes included within the hardware modules.
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