T-Plan Robot Enterprise 4.0.2 Script Recorder

Contents
1. Script Recorder Overview
2. General Principles
3. Mouse Event Recording
4. Keyboard Event Recording

1. Script Recorder Overview

Script Recorder is a component able to record your interaction with the desktop into the active editor. It provides what is often called the "Record & Replay" feature. Since release 3 the feature can record test scripts in both the TPR and Java formats.

When the Script Recorder is activated, it attaches to the desktop viewer event queue to capture user input events such as:

Mouse events such as mouse moves, clicks and drags and mouse wheel events,
Keyboard events, which represent keys or combination of keys pressed on the keyboard.

The events are then processed by the internal scripting command engine which produces a piece of scripting code.

To start/stop script recording select/deselect Script -> Record in the main GUI menu or the

button on the tool bar. The following chapters describe functionality of the recording module and discuss how to configure and customize its behavior.

2. General Principles

The recorder maps the user performed key and mouse events as well as their timeline onto commands of the scripting language (when the target script is a TPR one) or onto method calls of the Java Test Script API. The resulting code is always inserted into current caret position of the active editor. If there's already a command on the line, the recorder creates a new line below the current one.

Time spans between single commands are captured through the 'wait' command parameters or Wait commands where the parameter is not supported. If you for example perform a mouse click while the recording feature is on, a command like the one below appears in your active editor:

Mouse click to=x:253,y:132

Wait a while and perform another mouse click. The code will look like this:

Mouse click


        to=x:253,y:132
          wait=3400

        Mouse

click


        to=x:355,y:144

Note that the first command was updated with the 'wait' parameter. Its value represents the time elapsed between the mouse clicks in miliseconds. When the preceding command doesn't support the 'wait' parameter (e.g. Screenshot or Report commands), the recording module rather produces a Wait command:

Screenshot init.jpg
        desc="Initial
remote
            desktop state."

Wait
        3400

 Mouse

click

to=x:253,y:132

Preceding WaitFor commands are never updated this way because their 'wait' parameters may be related to multiple updates. See the Waitfor Command Window page for more information.

To track the time spans the module maintains a timer which measures time from the last user action (i.e. from the last time it inserted or updated a command in the editor). This timer runs only if the desktop viewer is active meaning when the mouse pointer is within its bounds. If you move your mouse pointer out of the viewer, the timer stops and it won't start ticking until you move the mouse pointer into its bounds again. This feature allows to exclude the time you spend on other tasks such as manual script editing and using of other tools or applications. Remember to move your mouse pointer out of the remote desktop if you are going to do something else to prevent the module from introducing of large wait times into the script commands. Otherwise develop a habit of checking the generated timeouts and adjust those which are inappropriately long.

3. Mouse Event Recording

Mouse pointer events are recorded as follows:

Mouse moves generate Mouse move commands into the active editor. As recording of every tiny mouse move would produce a lot of code, mouse move commands are rather created only after you stop the mouse pointer for a certain period of time. This timeout is by default set to 300 miliseconds.
Mouse clicks insert Mouse click commands into the active editor. Two subsequent clicks are recognized as double/multiple clicks if their time span does not exceed configured delay. Default value is 300 miliseconds.
Mouse drags produce Mouse drag commands.

All parameters described above are configurable in the Mouse panel under the Script Recorder group of the Preferences window. See the following screenshot.

To produce a shorter and simpler test script code one can disable recording of the mouse move events. It is then however necessary to avoid any desktop actions which are triggered by mouse moves. A typical example is the Start menu in MS Windows which displays submenus depending on mouse moves. Such actions will not record if mouse moves are disabled and your script will fail to reproduce the required behavior. A workaround is either to perform mouse clicks

Mouse Recording Preferences

4. Keyboard Event Recording

Keyboard events are recorded as follows:

If the key you press is an action or control key (e.g. Alt+S, F1, Enter, etc.), a Press command is produced. If the same key is pressed within a certain period of time, it is considered to be a multiple press and the recorder produces a single Press command with the 'count' parameter set to the number of pressed keys. This delay is by default set to 400 miliseconds.
Any other characters will be concatenated to a text and a Type command is produced. If you type a text and press Enter, a Typeline command is created rather than two separate commands 'Type <text>' and 'Press Enter' provided that the Enter key is pressed within a certain time period after the last text character. This timeout is by default set to 1 second.

All parameters described above are configurable in the Keyboard panel under the Script Recorder group of the Preferences window. See the following screenshot.

Key Recording Preferences