How to get an array of objects with same property

[andreimarfievici]

Hi all,

I have a Siebel app that runs in IE8 and I want to interact with some ActiveX controls that are basically some windows. These controls don't have any name or id, but I can get their hwnds with WinSpy++:

w = RAutomation::Window.new :hwnd=>'00090BB2'.to_i(16)

The problem is that the hwnds are changing every time I open the app so I was thinking getting their parent that is the Internet Explorer Server inside the IE browser, then get the children and reference each child by index. I want to get the parent cause it actually has a class name. Or can I get an array with all the children if I know their class name (#32770 in this case)?

So how can I interact with these elements if their hwnds change all the time?

I have attached a screenshot of the app taken with WinSpy++.

Thanks a lot!\ Andrei

[leviwilson]

Have you tried using the :ms_uia adapter? I'm curious if either Inspect or UISpy see these controls (by either their AutomationId or Name properties).

[jarmo]

You can get all the children via class name like this:

controls = window.controls(class: "#32770")
puts controls[0].hwnd

Not sure if this works with ms_uia adapter too.

[andreimarfievici]

Thank you guys, it works great using controls, now I can have a model like

ie = RAutomation::Window.new :title => /Siebel/
sieb_controls = ie.controls(:class => 'Edit')
customer_name = RAutomation::Window.new :hwnd => sieb_controls[7]
customer_name.send_keys 'test customer'

Keep up the good work!

[andreimarfievici]

By the way, it works with ms_uia too and then instead of getting value, I use control_name:

ie = RAutomation::Window.new(:title=>/Siebel/, :adapter => 'ms_uia')
ie.controls(:class=>'Edit').each{|o| p o.control_name}

Thanks again!

Still, would be great to be able to get the parent window. Is there any way to do that?

[leviwilson]

Currently there isn't any way to get the immediate parent of a control. You can get the Window that it is within (through control.instance_variable_get(:@window)) but it isn't publicly exposed. What would be the use case for that?

[andreimarfievici]

In my example, I have a window with an edit control. For this edit field, I want to set and get text.

#to get the text of an Edit field I use the Window object with the text method
w = RAutomation::Window.new :hwnd => '004308BC'.to_i(16)
w.text
=> "6421586488"
#if we do w.send_keys, it doesn't work
#to set the value of an edit field, we have to get the Edit control inside the window, create a new window with its hwnd and send keys to it
edit_field = w.control(:class=>'Edit')
edit = RAutomation::Window.new :hwnd => edit_field.hwnd
edit.send_keys 'blah'
#but if I do edit.text I don't get blah, I have to refer the parent again
edit.text
=> ""
w.text
=> "blah"

It would be a little bit more intuitive if I can do edit.parent.text, although I don't understand why it doesn't work with edit.text

The problem is I have to create 2 separate windows and use one as a setter and the other one as a getter. Using the parent reference would make things easier rather than getting the hwnd and create new object.

Maybe it's just my example, anyway I can totally work around this. Hope I made my self clear enough...

Thanks, Andrei