Data Recorder

Ask general questions here.
atom
Posts: 357
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2008 11:14 pm
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Data Recorder

Post by atom » Mon Oct 05, 2009 6:59 pm

Hiya,

It would be really great if Ranorex developed a Data Record / Data Playback tool
The idea of the tool is simple:

- At design time we point the tool to a window, and it saves an xml file with structure:

<data>
<control id="100">Hello</control>
<control id="101">Work</control>
</data>

- At execution time we get a Form element of the same window, load the xml file
and call a method to put all the data back into the controls

I think it would be limited to simple controls (Text/Combo/Radio/Check) but would save alot of coding

Thanks

User avatar
Support Team
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 12145
Joined: Fri Jul 07, 2006 4:30 pm
Location: Houston, Texas, USA
Contact:

Re: Data Recorder

Post by Support Team » Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:07 am

Thanks for your input, atom!

The data recorder you described could really save some work, however, it will be really hard to create a general recorder that works for all kind of applications. The problem is that the recorder can't know a priori how to put the data into a control. In the Windows Calculator, for example, you can't just put text into the text field, but you have to click on the buttons for the individual digits. There are simple controls that will work obviously (the data recorder could manage very simple dialogs), but as soon as you have to use one control to edit data in another, it gets complicated.

We would rather like to add better support for data-driven testing to our framework and to the Ranorex Recorder. The idea is that you would record the actions to put data in your dialog/application once using the Ranorex Recorder and then replace the hard coded values by variables that at replaying retrieve data from a database or some XML/CSV file. That way, you could handle complex data input techniques using the Ranorex Recorder and replay the recording for several data sets. Its quite similar to your data recorder, however, you explicitly control how the data is put into your application.
(And to answer the upcoming question: There is no release date for that feature, yet ;-) )

Regards,
Alex
Ranorex Support Team