Ranorex Forum

I'm using Ranorex 3.0 on Windows 7 and I really like the new feature where it takes screenshots on a User error. I was wondering if it is possible to enable this somewhere for Module errors too. It would be helpful to get a screenshot to see if the repo item is actually on the screen and just not being found.

Hi,

actually these screenshots are also shown on a module error.
To en/disable this feature you have to enter the Test Suite settings and check/uncheck "Capture Tracing Screenshots".

Kind regards,
Tobias
Support Team

Thanks for the reply. The only option I see in the recording's settings is under Recorder Defaults: "Capture a screenshot for each step." which was already checked. Where is the "Capture Tracing Screenshots" option located?

Thanks

Hi,

right-click your project in Test Suite and choose Properties from context menu.
There you can see the option "Capture Tracing Screenshots".

Kind regards,
Tobias
Support Team

Thank you, but that was already enabled as well. Is there any other reason why Module errors would not be getting screenshots?

Hi,

No there is no other reason why the tracing screenshot isn't captured. If this option is enabled, a screenshot of the whole screen will be performed on an error. Could you post us a sample where the screenshot isn't captured correctly?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Peter
Ranorex Team

I was not sure what I could post as a sample that would be helpful. I've posted a screenshot of our error report showing the issue, as you can see there is no screenshot of the error in the first test case, but the next test case generates screenshots, and the following testcase has screenshots of at least 1 step prior to the error. I'd like to have screenshots of at least 1 prior step on all my errors, but it only happens sometimes. The biggest problem is getting no screenshot at all though because this makes it hard to discern if it is an error in the ranorex script or the software crashed.

Thank you

Hi,

It is limited to 14 images for the whole report and 4 images per module, because otherwise Ranorex takes to much memory and this could cause performance problems. In a future release of Ranorex we will redesign this or add a settings-flag to set this limits using a dialog.

Regards,
Peter
Ranorex Team

Does 4 images per module mean you can only take 4 images per recording?

I don't think adding a settings flag to set the limits is a proper solution. I think whatever is causing Ranorex to use up memory when a screen shot is captured is the real issue. Why is this memory not released after the screen shot is captured? We should not have a limitation on the number of screen shots we can take.

What if we set the limit to 4 screen shots and I have a crash in that same report after all 4 screen shots have been taken? I will miss the error screen shot and have to run the test manually to determine what happened.

I think this should be a bug report and the fix how screen shots are captured if it is hanging on to memory causing performance problems.

Gunner1980 wrote:Does 4 images per module mean you can only take 4 images per recording?

No, sorry, I think Peter was a little bit imprecise in his posting. The current limitation with 3.0.1 is that there can be only 4 auto generated images per module, i.e. the ones automatically generated when an error occurs. The same is true for the 14 images limitation for the whole report. User generated screenshots are not affected.

Gunner1980 wrote:I think whatever is causing Ranorex to use up memory when a screen shot is captured is the real issue.

It is not the taking of screenshots that is a problem, but holding all taken screenshots in memory.

Gunner1980 wrote:I think this should be a bug report

We already removed the global (14 images) limitation for the report. Still, Ranorex will only show the (automatically created) screenshots of the last N actions (where N is configurable) of each module that failed.

Regards,
Alex
Ranorex Team

Alex,

I've downloaded 3.01 and I'm not seeing any options where I can change the global setting from 14 to another number. Could you point me to where this can be modified, 4 per module is an acceptable amount, however we have over 50 tests and I want to have at least 1-3 screenshots per test if it fails (ie Autogenerated). The problem I'm seeing now is if half my tests fail, only the last 4 or 5 tests get screenshots and sometimes these screenshots are just a black image.

Thanks for your help.

Support Team wrote: It is not the taking of screenshots that is a problem, but holding all taken screenshots in memory.

This may be a silly question but why is Ranorex holding on to all taken screenshots in memory? Why not save it off after it is taken, that way it isn't using up memory and if the script crashes for some reason we don't lose all screenshots taken up to that point?

Gunner1980 wrote:why is Ranorex holding on to all taken screenshots in memory? Why not save it off after it is taken

Ranorex takes a screenshot before every action in a recording. However, saving all those screenshots would result in much garbage on your disk, that's why we only save the last 4 images taken before an error occurs. This allows the use to better understand what went wrong.

But you are right, if there is an error and screenshots have to be saved, they also should be saved We have a little bug in there with 3.0.1 (as explained in the previous posts) that will be corrected with the next maintenance release.

Regards,
Alex
Ranorex Team

I'm sorry what exactly is the bug in 3.01? Is it possible to set the global max count for screenshots as you stated? I do not see the ability to do this anywhere.

"We already removed the global (14 images) limitation for the report. Still, Ranorex will only show the (automatically created) screenshots of the last N actions (where N is configurable) of each module that failed."

tallahassee101 wrote:I'm sorry what exactly is the bug in 3.0.1?

No bug only a limitation. The current limitation with 3.0.1 is that there can be only 4 auto generated images per module, i.e. the ones automatically generated when an error occurs. The same is true for the 14 images limitation for the whole report.

tallahassee101 wrote:Is it possible to set the global max count for screenshots as you stated?

Who stated this, that this is in release 3.0.1?

Regards,
Peter
Ranorex Team