How to get data from custom properties in UITestPropertyProvider

Question

According to the code sample on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh552522.aspx) any custom property data that you need to get out of your control should be in a semicolon delimited string in the AccessibleObject's Description property. This does not seem right to me at all. This seems like just a quick and dirty trick to get it working. What is the correct way to get the value of properties from custom controls? And if this actually is how you're supposed to do it, then how are you supposed to set those properties using the SetPropertyValue method? The example in the link above just throws a NotImplementedException in SetPropertyValue.

Answer 1

Since the IAccessible interface has only a limited number of properties the best solution is to cram any extra information into the Description property (that's what they do at the company I work at, and our developers don't work quick and dirty :) ). To modify the return value of this property you have to implement the Iaccessible interface on your control. Or, since you only want to modify the Description property you only need to modify that property and leave the rest to the proxy (I'm not sure how this works exactly but there are tutorials for it on MSDN).

The SetPropertyValue method in the UITestPropertyProvider is for the UItestControls. By overwriting it you can modify the way CUIT interacts with the control during playback. For example, if you overwrite SetPropertyValue for the Text property you can change the way CUIT types strings into the control.