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My team currently uses TestComplete for automated UI testing (of a .Net 3.5 WinForms application). We are considering switching tools - a primary reason is that we want to write UI tests using C#. (Our non-UI tests - unit, integration, system - are all C#, our team is experienced in writing and organizing code in C#, we like the benefit of compile time checks of test code, etc)

One very important feature of TestComplete however is the ability to access native properties of .Net Objects in the AUT. There are some awkward bits of our UI where we need to read underlying data and do a bit of arithmetic in order to determine how to perform the next action. We can use TestComplete's object browser to attach to the GUI app and start exploring the control hierarchy, and explore .Net properties/fields too. And access the same in our automated tests: http://support.smartbear.com/viewarticle/30816/

I've had a very quick look at Ranorex (which ticks the C# box), and it doesn't appear to be as capable as TestComplete in this sense. It seems to get stuck and return null as soon as a property/field type is not serializable: http://www.ranorex.com/blog/transfering-data-to-and-from-a-net-control

It seems reasonable that to copy an object over the process boundary, the object should be serializable, but then what is TestComplete doing? Something nasty with reflection?

My question is, are there any test frameworks that make this property browsing as easy as TestComplete, while allowing us to write tests in C#? (and hopefully being a bit less prone to crashing than TestComplete)

The Ranorex link seems to indicate that we can write our own (test) code to map the object into something that can be transferred, but this is additional effort. Also, TestComplete's object browser is very useful for testers to manually explorer the murky depths of the App, while Ranorex's Spy tool does not allow you to browse to non-serializable objects.

Rob
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    Have you looked into the C# Connected Applications feature in TestComplete? It allows you creating tests that use TestComplete engines in Visual Studio with C#. More information can be found in the Creating Connected Applications in C# (http://support.smartbear.com/viewarticle/32323/) help topic. – Dmitry Nikolaev Jan 18 '13 at 11:07
  • No - I wasn't aware of it. I need to investigate further, but this looks promising. Thanks! – Rob Jan 18 '13 at 11:29
  • I'm not sure how TestComplete works. But when I worked with Squish (it has similar capabilities), it did even worse then reflection. It used dllinjection to read raw values and return them. This is poweful, but not very reliable. – Vladimir Perevalov Jan 18 '13 at 11:39
  • I believe TestComplete (& Ranorex) also use dllinjection - how else do they get to see the internals of a separate process? Code running inside the application under test (via dllinjection) can see the objects, but how does it copy them (or a proxy for them) to the test process? – Rob Jan 18 '13 at 11:46

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Did you try the InvokeRemotely() method? It should not have any limitations.

user1982826
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