Q: For new users, how to use WinRunner to test software applications automately ?

A: The following steps may be of help to you when automating tests

1. MOST IMPORTANT - write a set of manual tests to test your application - you cannot just jump in with WR and expect to produce a set of meaningful tests. Also as you will see from the steps below this set of manual tests will form your plan to tackle automation of your application.
2. Once you have a set of manual tests look at them and decide which ones you can automate using your current level of expertise. NOTE that there will be tests that are not suitable for automation, either because you can't automate them, or they are just not worth the effort.
3. Automate the tests selected in step 2 - initially you will use capture/replay using the steps in the manual test, but you will soon see that to produce meaningful and informative tests you need to add additional code to your test eg. use tl_step() to give test results. As this process continues you will soon see that there are operations that you repeatedly do in multiple tests - these are then candidates for user-defined functions and compiled modules
4. Once you have completed step 3 go back to step 2 and you will find that the knowledge you have gained in step 3 will now allow you to select some more tests that you can do.

If you continue going through this loop you will gradually become more familiar with WR and TSL, in fact you will probably find that eventually you do very little capture/replay and more straight TSL coding.

Q: How to use WinRunne to check whether the record was updated or the record was delelte or the record was inserted or not?

Using WinRunner check point features: Create->dDB checkpoint->Runtime Record check

Q: How to use WinRunner to test the login screen

A: When you enter wrong id or password, you will get Dialog box.

   1. Record this Dialog box
   2. User win_exists to check whether dialog box exists or not
   3. Playback: Enter wrong id or password, if win_exists is
                true, then your application is working good.
                Enter  good id or password, if win_exists is false,
                then your application is working perfectly.

Q: After clicking on "login" button, they opens other windows of the web application, how to check that page is opened or not

When your expecting "Window1" to come up after clicking on Login...

Capture the window in the GUI Map. No two windows in an web based 
application can have the same html_name property. Hence, this would 
be the property to check.

First try a simple win_exists("window1", ) in an IF condition.

If that does'nt work, try the function,

win_exists("{ class: window, MSW_class: html_frame, 
html_name: "window1"}",);

Q: Winrunner testscript for checking all the links at a time

Q: How to get the resolution settings

Q: WITHOUT the GUI map, use the phy desc directly....

Q: What are the three modes of running the scripts?

WinRunner provides three modes in which to run tests: Verify, Debug, and Update. You use each mode during a different phase of the testing process.
Verify
Use the Verify mode to check your application.
Debug
Use the Debug mode to help you identify bugs in a test script.
Update
Use the Update mode to update the expected results of a test or to create a new expected results folder.

Q: How do you handle unexpected events and errors?

WinRunner uses exception handling to detect an unexpected event when it occurs and act to recover the test run.
WinRunner enables you to handle the following types of exceptions:
Pop-up exceptions: Instruct WinRunner to detect and handle the appearance of a specific window.
TSL exceptions: Instruct WinRunner to detect and handle TSL functions that return a specific error code.
Object exceptions: Instruct WinRunner to detect and handle a change in a property for a specific GUI object.
Web exceptions: When the WebTest add-in is loaded, you can instruct WinRunner to handle unexpected events and errors that occur in your Web site during a test run.

Q: How do you handle pop-up exceptions?

A pop-up exception Handler handles the pop-up messages that come up during the execution of the script in the AUT. TO handle this type of exception we make WinRunner learn the window and also specify a handler to the exception. It could be
Default actions: WinRunner clicks the OK or Cancel button in the pop-up window, or presses Enter on the keyboard. To select a default handler, click the appropriate button in the dialog box.
User-defined handler: If you prefer, specify the name of your own handler. Click User Defined Function Name and type in a name in the User Defined Function Name box.

Q: How do you handle TSL exceptions?

Suppose you are running a batch test on an unstable version of your application. If your application crashes, you want WinRunner to recover test execution. A TSL exception can instruct WinRunner to recover test execution by exiting the current test, restarting the application, and continuing with the next test in the batch.
The handler function is responsible for recovering test execution. When WinRunner detects a specific error code, it calls the handler function. You implement this function to respond to the unexpected error in the way that meets your specific testing needs.
Once you have defined the exception, WinRunner activates handling and adds the exception to the list of default TSL exceptions in the Exceptions dialog box. Default TSL exceptions are defined by the XR_EXCP_TSL configuration parameter in the wrun.ini configuration file.

Q: How to write an email address validation script in TSL?

public function IsValidEMAIL(in strText)
{
auto aryEmail[], aryEmail2[], n;


n = split(strText, aryEmail, "@");
if (n != 2)
return FALSE;

# Ensure the string "@MyISP.Com" does not pass...
if (!length(aryEmail[1]))
return FALSE;

n = split(aryEmail[2], aryEmail2, ".");
if (n < 2)
return FALSE;
# Ensure the string "Recipient@." does not pass...
if (!(length(aryEmai2[1]) * length(aryEmai2[1])))
return FALSE;

return TRUE;
}

Q: How to have winrunner insert yesterdays date into a field in the application?

1) Use get-time to get the PC system time in seconds since 01/01/1970

2)Subtract 86400 (no seconds in a day) from it

3)Use time_str to convert the result into a date format

4)If format of returned date is not correct use string manipulations to get
the format you require

5) Insert the date into your application


Alternatively you could try the following :

1) In an Excel datasheet create a column with an appropriate name, and in
the first cell of the column use the excel formula 'today() - 1'

2) Format the cell to give you the required date format

3) Use the ddt- functions to read the date from the excel datasheet

4) insert the reteived date into your application

Q: How can withwin runner to make single scripts which supports multiple languages?

Actually, you can have scripts that run for different locales.I have a set of scripts that run for Japanese as well as English Locales. Idea is to have objects recorded in GUI Map with a locale independent physical description. This can be achieved in two ways.
1. After recording the object in the GUI Map, inspect the description and ensure that no language specific properties are used. For ex: html_name property for an object of class: html_text_link could be based on the text. You can either remove these language dependent properties if it doesnt really affect your object recognition. If it does affect, you need to find another property for the object that is locale independent. This new property may be something thats already there or you need to create them. This leads to the next option.
2. Have developers assign a locale independent property like 'objname' or something to all objects that you use in your automated scripts. Now, modify your GUI Map description for the particular object to look for this property instead of the standard locale dependent properties recorded by WR (these default properties are in GUI Map Configuration).
or
You could also use a GUI map for each locale. Prefix the GUI map name with the locale (e.g. jpn_UserWindow.gui and enu_UserWindow.gui) and load the correct map based on the current machine locale. Specifically, you can use the get_lang() function to obtain the current language setting, then load the appropriate GUI map in your init script. Take a look at the sample scripts supplied with WinRunner (for the flight application). I think those scripts are created for both English and Japanese locales.

After taking care of different GUIs for different locales, the script also needs some modification. If you are scripting in English and then moving on to any other language (say Japanese), all the user inputs will be in English. Due to this the script will fail as it is expecting a Japanese input for a JPN language. Instead of using like that, assign all the user inputs to a variable and use the same wherever the script uses it. This variables has to be assigned (may be after the driver script) before you call the script which you want to run. You should have different variable scripts for different languages. Depending on the language you want to run, call the appropriate variable script file. This will help you to run the same script with different locale

Q: How to use a regular _expression in the physical description of a window in the GUI map?

Several web page windows with similar html names - they all end in or contain "| MyCompany" The GUI Map has saved the following physical description for one of these windows:

Q: How to force WR to learn the sub-items on a menu...?

If WR is not learning sub-items then the easy way id to add manually those sub items in to GUI map.. of course you need to study the menu description and always add the PARENT menu name for that particular sub-menu..

Q: How to check property of specific Icon is highlighted or not?

set_window("Name of the window");
obj_check_info("Name of the object ","focused",0ut_value);

check for out_value & proceed further

Q: BitMap or GUI Checkpoints

DO NOT use BitMap or GUI Checkpoints for dynamic verification. These checkpoints are purely for static verifications. There are ofcourse, work-arounds, but mostly not worth the effort.

Q: How to to get the information from the status bar without doing any activity/click on the hyperlink?

You can use the "statusbar_get_text("Status Bar",0,text);" function 
"text" variable contains the status bar statement.

or

web_cursor_to_link ( link, x, y );

link	The name of the link.
x,y	The x- and y-coordinates of the mouse pointer when moved to a link,
relative to the upper left corner of the link.

Q: Object name Changing dynamically?

1.
logicalname:"chkESActivity"
 {
  class: check_button,
  MSW_class: html_check_button,
  html_name: chkESActivity,
  part_value: 90
 }   
2.
logical name "chkESActivity_1"
 
{
  class: check_button,
  MSW_class: html_check_button,
  html_name: chkESActivity,
  part_value: 91
}


Replace with:

Logical:"CheckBox"    # you give any name as the logical name
{
 class: check_button,
 MSW_class: html_check_button,
 html_name: chkESActivity,
 part_value: "![0-9][0-9]" 	# changes were done here
}

you can use any of the checkbox command like
button_set("CheckBox",ON); 	# the above statement will check any check 


box with part value ranging from 00 to 99

Q: Text Field Validations

Q: Loads multiple giumaps into an array

#GUIMAPS-------------------------------------------------------------------
static guiname1 = "MMAQ_guimap.gui";
static guiname2 = "SSPicker_guimap.gui";
static guiname3 = "TradeEntry.gui";
static guiLoad[] = {guiname1, guiname2, guiname3}
 
Then I just call the function:
#LOAD GUIMAP FILES VIA THE LOAD GUIMAP FUNCTION (this closes ALL open guimaps)
rc = loadGui(guiLoad); 
if (rc != "Pass") #Check success of the Gui_Load
{ 
tl_step("Guiload",FAIL,"Failed to load Guimap(s)for "&testname(getvar)); 
    #This line to test log
texit("Failed to load Guimap(s)for "&testname(getvar)); 
}

public function loadGui(inout guiLoad[])
{
static i;
static rc;

# close any temp GUI map files
GUI_close("");
GUI_close_all(); 

for(i in guiLoad) 
{ 
rc = (GUI_load(GUIPATH & guiLoad));
if ((rc != 0) && (rc != E_OK)) #Check the Gui_Load
{
return ("Failed to load " &guiLoad);
} 
}
return ("Pass");


}

Q: How to break infinite loop

This looks like its happening because the data has
been written to the db after your checkpoint, so you
have to do a runtime record check Create>Database
Checkpoint>Runtime Record Check.  You may also have to
perform some customization if the data displayed in
the application is in a different format than the data
in the database by using TSL.  For example, converting
radio buttons to database readable form involves the
following:

# Flight Reservation
	set_window ("Flight Reservation", 2);
#	edit_set ("Date of Flight:", "06/08/02");

# retrieve the three button states
	button_get_state ( "First", first);
	button_get_state ( "Business", bus);
	button_get_state ( "Economy", econ);

# establish a variable with the correct numeric value
based on which radio button is set
	if (first)
		service="1";
		
	if (bus)
		service="2";
		
	if (econ)
		service="3";
	
	set_window("Untitled - Notepad",3);
	
	edit_set("Report Area",service);
	
	db_record_check("list1.cvr", DVR_ONE_MATCH,record_num);