XPath for Better Desktop Automation Performance

XPath for better desktop automation performance

Nexial auto scans the desktop elements by using XPATH, that is being provided through application.json file for the respective form. Providing an efficient XPATH for the desktop components and an additional info in application.json file as mentioned below, would improve the performance in accessing the desktop elements during script execution.

How to make an efficient XPATH? The below steps may help

• If the desktop component has @AutomationId attribute and the value is consistent, use only this attribute to find the component and no need to combine with other attributes like @ControlType.
• Nexial uses this as parent XPATH and auto scans all the child elements for that form. So, all the child elements will have the XPATH until the parent element same as that was provided in application.json file.
• If you want to omit adding @ControlType attribute, for all the child elements that are auto scanned, specify "globalXpathGenerationStrategy": "OMIT_CONTROL_TYPE" in the "app" section of application.json. This will be applied to all the components.
• By providing this, it will omit adding the @ControlType of the element while creating cache json file for all the elements.
• It is an optional information that user needs to provide if the XPATH to be generated omitting @ControlType.

How to convert the existing json files? Use the tool included in Nexial

• XPATHs used in application.json file (including cache json files) for all the desktop components, could be modified to achieve optimized XPATHs which means avoiding @ControlType when @AutomationId is provided.
• nexial-desktop-xpath-update.cmd is able to convert the XPATHs for the existing json files.
• Converting XPATHs in the existing json files
  1. From command line, run nexial-desktop-xpath-update.cmd -t <filePath>
  2. file path can be a folder location where all the json files exists or can be a specific json file
  3. A backup folder will be created with timestamp to save all the existing json files before conversion.