SILK TEST A QUICK TOUR

BY

JAGAN MOHAN JULOORU

Sr. Software Engineer

Value Labs

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

 SILK TEST A QUICK TOUR

1. Silk test software is divided into two parts: silk test host and silk test agent. The host software

provides the user with functionality to create plans, test scripts etc, while the agent software

interacts directly with the GUI (or drives the application under test).

[In short, Agent is required on the machine where u want to run the script. While host is what u

see when u start silk test from program manager)

2. There are two kinds of applications you might automate with silk test.

a) Web based

b) Desktop Application / Client – Server Applications

Here, we are not discussing about automation of web based application. There are lots of

similarities, so anyone who understands automating a desktop application can learn web based

application automation with a little extra effort.

3. The procedure followed to automate an application is:

a. Start by creating a frame file (.inc file).

b. Then write (or record) test scripts (.t files) and call these from the plan file (.pln files).

When the script is run or we do some recording, the agent software is automatically

launched (can be observed it in the taskbar) as this is the software which does all

the interaction with the GUI.

4. Let us first start with creating the frame file:

a) First Click on File -> New, then select “Test Frame” in the file types listed and click ok.

b) You shall find the new test frame dialog box, here, you shall find a list of applications

that are open, including the program manager. Select the application whose frame you

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

 want to create. If the application is not shown, just click on the window corresponding to

that application and then switch back to silk test to see it listed in the dialog box.

5. Now, let us create a frame file for notepad. As such when you select the notepad application

in the dialog box mentioned in step 4, it automatically creates a frame file for this. But this frame

file does not include the class descriptions for the dialog boxes that are invoked when we click on

one of the menu items (file->open, for ex). Save the frame file that is automatically created with

name X.

6. Now, Let us study this inc file before proceeding any further. The inc file starts with a very

simple statement: const wMainWindow = Notepad . wMainWindow is the constant which

points to the home page of your application or the main window of the application(to which u have

pointed in the dialog box of step 4).When the test fails, this is treated as the base state. [After we

run the test, it can be observed in the result file a statement saying: default base state is closing

this window etc, this means that silk is trying to bring back the UI to this wMainWindow state to

ensure that the next state works fine. Default base state is explained later]

7. The next statement you see would look something like this:

window MainWin Notepad

This declaration identifies an object in the application under test. This window is a keyword.

MainWin is the class and Notepad is the name of the object here. An object is essentially seen

as a container for the other objects that are declared in the window: wMainWindow which we

discussed in step 6, is essentially pointing to this window as we can see. MainWin is the class for

the main window of the application.

8. If we expand this (window MainWin Notepad), we shall find the following statement

[-] multitag "*Notepad"

[ ] "$C:\WINNT\system32\notepad.exe"

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

A tag or a multitag statement shall be present here. Tag statement is functionally equivalent to a

multi tag statement. Other than differences in syntax both are the same. These statements are

used by the “Silk Agent” to identify the GUI object at runtime. There are 5 types of tags as in the

table below:

Tag type Value Comment

Caption Case sensitive The label for the check box.

Prior text ^Find What: The closest static text above the check box.

Index #1 It is the first check box in the dialog.

Window ID $1,041 GUI-specific tag.

Location @(57,65) (x, y) location of the check box in the dialog.

In this particular case, the notepad’s caption and its id (see that id starts with $ and caption is just

the string) are used to identify the window. We shall find similar statements for the other objects

in the window also. For example see this line:

[-] Menu File

[ ] tag "File"

This statement simply says that there is an object with identifier “File” and which is an object of

the class “Menu”. Further it also says that this object is to be identified by the tag “File”, which is

the caption is “File”. Also, since this is “inside” the Notepad object, this is contained in it.

9. The sDir constant contains the working directory of the application when it is started and the

sCmdLine constant contains the application’s exe. This is used to invoke the application. The

wMainwin will identify the main window. And in this main window sCmdLine constant is used to

invoke it.

10. The wStartup constant is commented out. This is used if when the application is invoked an

additional window appears before the main window’s appearance. For example, for some

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

applications, when the application is invoked, a logon window appears before the actual main

window. This logon window needs to be handled. In such cases we record the logon window

separately and assign the identifier of this window object to wStartup. Let us discuss what shall

be done next, a little later.

11. The lwLeaveopen constant is commented too. This is a set of windows we do not want the

recovery system to close when arriving at the default base state. Usually when a test case fails

(or ends), the silk recovery system comes into play.There is an inc file with name defaults.inc in

the silk test program directory. This contains the routines for recovery system. That is it contains

the DefaultBaseState function which does the clean up in recovery process. There are other

scripts like DefaultScriptEntry, DefaultScriptExit etc . These functions are called before a test

script entry, and at exit etc. lwLeaveOpen constant stops the default base state from closing

specific windows while trying to arrive at the default base state.

12. What is default base state? Default base state is an application state. That is , suppose u do

some operations and at the end of those operations you are in an application state. We can

define application states (by specifying how to arrive at them) and make specific test cases start

from such application states. Default base state is the application state where the test cases start

by default. By default this is the main window. But, this may be modified, as we shall see soon.

13. The rest of the statements are simply Menu object declarations. Each Menu object

declaration contains the declarations for MenuItems. If you look into each of these statements

you shall find those “tag” and “multitag” statements.

14. We also have one MessageBox object declaration of MessageBoxClass. This is for message

Boxes. This is included by default, as message boxes may pop up any time while a windows

application is running.

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

15. Let us now proceed to write this small “.t” file. Before creating this make sure the inc file is

listed in the use files text box in Options
Runtime Options. If you are using web based

applications make sure to select the correct browser type in this runtime options dialog box. If you

are not using any browser, make sure to set the browser in runtime options dialog to none.

16. The .t file should contain the following code:

[-] testcase t()

[ ] wMainWindow.File.Open.Pick()

Now. Open is an object of MenuItem type. This MenuItem class will have lots of functions. See

the help for the list. You can use these functions on it. Also, in order to navigate in the editor of

these .t files, we will have to use Alt + Left arrow to “go in” and Alt + Right Arrow to move out.

Note this since we do not have { and } as in c++ to state what all is inside an if statement, say.

The only way we can ensure this, therefore is by indenting the lines accordingly. For example, in

the above code, the statement is inside testcase t(), statement.

17. If you have run this particular program the result file automatically appears.

This is the listing I am getting in the result file:

[ ] *** DefaultBaseState is invoking Notepad

[ ] *** Warning: DefaultBaseState is closing Notepad windows

[ ] Closing Notepad.DialogBox("Open")

Default base state is invoked and finally restored, so that the next test case may run. As I already

mentioned, default base state is defined in the defaults.inc file.

18. When in Results mode, the silk test menu is different. There is a menu item Results that is

added. The .res file is by default saved in the program directory of silk. This path may be changed

through runtime options. Options
RuntimeOptions, Results, enter the directory in the text box

here. There is also an option to mention the history size. This may be varied too. This is the

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number of past results to be saved. Through Results
Merge option you may merge the past

results with the current ones. You can try this after creating the plan fine and calling this .t file

from there.

19. We could have recorded the test case using the Record
Actions or Record
TestCase

options. But we chose to write it manually, coz we think we are good programmers ;).

20. Let us now proceed to record the File open dialog box also. To record the File open dialog

box and add it to the .inc file. Open the .inc file, Invoke the notepad and the Fileopen dialog box

and select Record
WindowDeclaration. Point to the Open DialogBox and press “Alt + Ctrl” to

stop recording. Copy it to clip board and paste it to the .inc file. Now the dialogbox is recognized.

21. Let us now rerun the .t file. We get the following result:

[ ] *** DefaultBaseState is invoking Notepad

[ ] *** Warning: DefaultBaseState is closing Notepad windows

[ ] Closing Open

Just see that the last statement is no more Closing Notepad.DialogBox(“Open”) ! This is coz silk

is now recognizing the Open dialog box. You wont get this this way if you either do not include the

correct frame file in Runtime Options, or if you have not compiled (using Run
Compile all).

22. Let us now get back to the .inc file for a moment. We have an additional statement: window

DialogBox Open. This appeared when we recorded the window declarations. You might have

straight away recognized what this means. It is simply the declaration for this object whose

identifier is “Open” and whose class is “dialogbox”. Classes are created much the same way as

we do in c++. We may write our own classes. Let us try this one. Let us write a class called

Dialogbox1. The syntax for writing classes is as below:

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

 [scope] winclass wclass-id [ : derived-class]

statements

So, that means, we can create a class by simply writing this:

winclass DialogBox1 : DialogBox

which means we are deriving our new class from the previous one. Then we may add

functions to this class in place of the “statements” . So, here is the piece of code I have added

to create a new class called DialogBox1

[-] winclass DialogBox1 : DialogBox

[-] void validateme()

[ ] print ("Jagans : Validation")

As you see, I have also added a function validateme() to this class which prints “Jagan:

Validation” to the output screen. Also this particular class inherits all the methods and objects of

the “DialogBox” class.

23. I have included the above definition of DialogBox1 class in the .inc file just after the

wMainwin statement. Let us now try this. Instead of having Open as an object of DialogBox , we

may make it an object of Dialogbox1. This is pretty simple, just modify the window statement of

Open as below:

window DialogBox1 Open

The remaining statements remain as they were, unchanged.

24. Having done this, let also modify the .t file to call this validateme function as below:

[-] testcase t()

[ ] wMainWindow.File.Open.Pick()

[ ] Open.validateme()

25. When we run this, we get the following output:

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

[ ] *** DefaultBaseState is invoking Notepad

[ ] Jagans : Validation

[ ] *** Warning: DefaultBaseState is closing Notepad windows

[ ] Closing Open

Note the second line; it is printing the statement in validateme function. So that serves our

purpose.

26. Let us now add this test case to a test plan . This is very simple too. First create a plan file ,

by file
New option and selecting a TestPlan in the file types. Here is what I wrote in the test

plan file:

[ ] script: test.t

[]

[-] this is my test case

[ ] testcase: t()

Now when I select and run this, the result is obvious.

27. We can also pass parameters to my scripts from here.:

[-] testcase t(int param)

[ ] wMainWindow.File.Open.Pick()

[ ] print(param)

[ ] Open.validateme()

Then, I modify my test plan as below and run it :

[ ] script: test.t

[]

[-] this is my test case

[ ] $param = 5

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 [ ] testcase: t($param)

Observe the syntax here.

28. We can create a new appstate. This means, our test case can be made to start from a

different state than the default base state. The following change in the .t file would do it for us:

[-] appstate NewState() basedon DefaultBaseState

[ ] wMainWindow.File.Open.Pick()

[]

[]

[-] testcase t(int param) appstate NewState

[ ] //wMainWindow.File.Open.Pick()

[ ] print(param)

[ ] Open.validateme()

If we run this, it runs just like the previous program! That is despite the fact that the first

statement in the test case is now commented!

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

SILK TEST FEATURES

Platform Independent

Silk Test doesn’t care about how the application is created, in which software the application is

written, what kind of design is used, which browser it is being worked, in which operating system

the application is running.

All that needs for an application to be tested using silktest is that it needs a frame (like window)

Browser Independent

There are various kinds of browsers used by various people for running their applications. The

user may use any browser of his choice to test the standard application. Each and every browser

acts differently with different applications. They show the same page differently. The web objects

they display can also be aligned or displayed in different manner.

SilkTest just looks at these browser contents as objects and hence they cannot avoid any

images, texts, that they are not identifiable. Also we can write a test in one browser and run it in

any other browser (to some extend). i.e, using SilkTest, we can do cross browser testing.

With minor modifications, your tests are robust enough to support different browsers and different

versions of these browsers.

Technology Independent

Silktest does not care how the application was built. It seamlessly works with the different web

technologies commonly used today.

How to use the same code for multiple browsers:

Start writing the silk scripts. Capture the window declarations (.inc file) and write the .t file. Say if

you are capturing the declarations from Internet Explorer & run successfully on it. As we captured

Silk Test – A Quick Tour

the declarations from I.E., we now have to make the same test case run on Netscape since the

tag value changes from multiple browsers.

Testing the Windows based applications

Before start writing scripts, enable the settings given below.

1. Declare all the window names and its objects (used in writing scripts) starting from the first

window.

2. In the File-> New option in the menu bar, select the test frame.

3. In the resulting ‘new Test Frame’ dialog box, specify the path of the executable file of your

application.

4. After submitting that dialog box, the silktest will automatically create a declaration file with the

default window declared.

5. Use that file to create your testscripts.

Testing the Java based applications

Before you start testing the java applications or applets, you have to set the java classpath.

• Point to a Java archive (.jar file) that contains the software the powers SilkTest’s Java

support for JDK 1.2 and JRE 1.2. This file is called SilkTest_Java2.jar.)

• When you install SilkTest_Java2.jar is installed in this directory:\JavaEx

• If you will use only JDK 1.2 for testing, you can activate Java support for JDK 1.2 by

copying SilkTest_Java2.jar from \JavaEx to \jre/lib/ext.

If you do not copy SilkTest_Java2.jar to your JDK 1.2 install directory, you must point to it from

your CLASSPATH.

Silk Test – A Quick Tour