QTP Object Synchronisation

Performing synchronisation in scripts is something that should be straight forward - the .exist(0) method makes this extremely simple. However, things start to get messy if we need to program extra error handling around it - something that should be straight forwards ends up being several lines of code. If you repeat this several times over then it's not being very efficient.

A way around this is to call a generic synchronise routine each time you want to wait for an object to exist. By following this practice you can build custom error handling into the synchronise routine without bloating your main automation code. I've built this into my keyword framework so that I always call it before trying to interact with an object, therefore I know that the object must exist before I try to do anything with it. It keeps my code clean and improves the reliability of my scripts.

A basic version of this is below, you can call it by hard coding the maximum wait value or if you want to abstract it further, define the timeout value in an environment variable.

The intMaxWait variable is the time in seconds you are willing to wait. The function returns a true or false value depending on whether or not the object was found.

How to call it:

blnSynced = SynchroniseOnObject(Browser("application a").Page("page b").WebElement("element c"), Environment("CustomTimeout"))

Function Code:

Function SynchroniseOnObject(objRepositoryItem, intMaxWait) 
 Dim blnObjectFound : blnObjectFound = False  
 Dim dtStart, intWaitedTime 
 Dim blnBreak : blnBreak = false  

 'get the current start time 
 dtStart = now()   
 do  
  'check if the object exists  
  If objRepositoryItem.Exist(0) Then   
   blnObjectFound = true   
   blnBreak = true  
  Else   
   'otherwise loop - calculate how long we have waited so far   
   intWaitedTime = datediff("s",dtStart,now())   
   If intWaitedTime  > intMaxWait then 
    blnBreak = true  
   else 
    'put some code in here to trap any errors,popups etc
   End if   
  End if
 loop until blnBreak  
 
 SynchroniseOnObject = blnObjectFound
End Function