One matter which appears frequently when using QuickTest Professional is that of objects with dynamic properties. The dilemma: QTP uses properties to identify the objects, and if those properties change, the object can no longer be identified in the Object Repository.


Recently I had an application that had a button that toggled its text label from “Billed” to “Unbilled” when clicked. The inexperienced tester will put another, “Unbilled”, object in the Object Repository, thus creating two objects that point to one thing on the screen. This is a hackish and inelegant workaround which will suffice if you just don’t know what to do.

But what happens if you want to verify that the label changes when clicked? You have a problem now, because your test will always pass, whether the requirement has been met or not.

In this case I changed the text label to a regular expression so that it can match any label I allow it to. To do this, just open the OR and click on the property that contains the text label. An icon of a pound sign within two pointy brackets will appear. Click on it and the Value Configurations box appears. Make sure the variable type Constant is selected and clear the edit field. Then check the “Regular Expression” checkbox and put in your regular expression.

In this case, I chose the following:

[UB][ni][bl][il][le][ld]+

It works thusly: the first character of the object is either a ‘U’ or a ‘B’. The second character must be an ‘n’ or an ‘i’, etc. We will note that the order of the characters within the square brackets is significant; we are essentially spelling both words out, with each set of square brackets containing the next letter in the respective words. So the two words we are looking for are “Unbill” and “Billed” with a plus sign appended to match the remaining characters in “Unbilled”. This is not the perfect regular expression, but it is specific enough for our needs. However, if a button is added with the label, say, “Unbillable”, I will have to make my regular expression more specific.

J9 Test Asset Developer