Getting / ussing full path to find controls in UIA and White - ui-automation

Question

I'm using Microsoft UI automation + White framework. Is it possible to get a full path from to the control from the top parent, and then use it to find an element? For example, use UI spy to get the full path, and then somehow get the control by the taken path?
Thanks

Answer 1

I use the unmanaged version of MSUIA and don't use white, but something like this should do what you are asking. Pass in an element.
CUIAutomation auto = new CUIAutomation();
var desktop = auto.GetRootElement();
var walker = GetRawTreeWalker();
while (true)
{
element = walker.GetParentElement(element);
if (auto.CompareElements(desktop, element) == 1)
{
break;
}
winPath = AppendWinPathPart(winPath, element);
}
AppendWinPathPart is a call to a method that builds something like a path in string form that I use in my automation. It is much like XPath for MSUIA.

Answer 2

I have done something in the past similar to what it sounds like you're trying to do. Unfortunately, it's not necessarily all that easy to do.
I essentially built my own simplified version of UI Spy that used some code similar to what's in the answer from #chrismead above to build a '\' delimited path of automation IDs (unfortunately, as you may have already discovered, AutomationIDs can be unreliable, so for the sake of robustness I also had to add the capability to identify AutomationElements by things like name, position among siblings, or position relative to parent).
Then, I had code in another application that could take those paths as input in order to locate those specific AutomationElements and interact with them.