How to specify Contains in UI Automation PropertyCondition - ui-automation

Question

I am using UI Automation for GUI testing.
My window title contains the application name appended by a filename.
So, I want to specify Contains in my Name PropertyCondition.
I checked the overload but it is related to Ignoring the Case of the Name value.
Can anyone let me know how to specify Contains in my Name PropertyCondition?
Regards,
kvk938

Answer 1

I've tried solution of Max Young but could not wait for its completion. Probably my visual tree was too large, not sure. I've decided that it's my app and I should use knowledge of concrete element type I am searching for, in my case it was WPF TextBlock so I've made this:
public AutomationElement FindElementBySubstring(AutomationElement element, ControlType controlType, string searchTerm)
{
AutomationElementCollection textDescendants = element.FindAll(
TreeScope.Descendants,
new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ControlTypeProperty, controlType));
foreach (AutomationElement el in textDescendants)
{
if (el.Current.Name.Contains(searchTerm))
return el;
}
return null;
}
sample usage:
AutomationElement textElement = FindElementBySubstring(parentElement, ControlType.Text, "whatever");
and it worked fast.

Answer 2

As far as I know their is no way to do a contains while using the name property but you could do something like this.
/// <summary>
/// Returns the first automation element that is a child of the element you passed in and contains the string you passed in.
/// </summary>
public AutomationElement GetElementByName(AutomationElement aeElement, string sSearchTerm)
{
AutomationElement aeFirstChild = TreeWalker.RawViewWalker.GetFirstChild(aeElement);
AutomationElement aeSibling = null;
while ((aeSibling = TreeWalker.RawViewWalker.GetNextSibling(aeFirstChild)) != null)
{
if (aeSibling.Current.Name.Contains(sSearchTerm))
{
return aeSibling;
}
}
return aeSibling;
}
Then you would do this to get the desktop and pass the desktop with your string into the above method
/// <summary>
/// Finds the automation element for the desktop.
/// </summary>
/// <returns>Returns the automation element for the desktop.</returns>
public AutomationElement GetDesktop()
{
AutomationElement aeDesktop = AutomationElement.RootElement;
return aeDesktop;
}
Complete usage would look something like
AutomationElement oAutomationElement = GetElementByName(GetDesktop(), "Part of my apps name");