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Automated tests that drive your application through its user interface (UI) are known as coded UI tests (CUITs). These tests include functional testing of the UI controls. They let you verify that the whole application, including its user interface, is functioning correctly. Coded UI Tests are particularly useful where there is validation or other logic in the user interface, for example in a web page. They are also frequently used to automate an existing manual test.

Coded UI Supported Technologies

Using Coded UI, one can easily test applications which has UI (User Interface). The application can be of either Web based or Windows based, coded UI supports them. Following UI technologies Coded UI supports
  • Windows based Desktop Applications (Windows Forms etc)
  • WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)
  • Web Applications (Html, Silverlight, Jscript, HTML 5)
  • Web Services (SOAP, ASPX etc)
  • Windows Phone applications (Available from Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 or later)
  • Windows Store applications

Comparing Coded UI with other tools

It’s very obvious here that,
  • Selenium does not support any Windows applications as well as WPF applications.
  • QTP does support Windows application, but requires .Net Plugin to be purchased and installed separately
  • Test complete does support Windows application, but requires plugin to be installed
  • No other tool, other than Visual Studio Coded UI support Windows phone application testing
  • No other tool, other than Visual Studio Coded UI support Windows store application testing
     
I have just compared some of the most commonly used popular tools against Visual Studio Coded UI testing.

Coded UI Application Testing feature

Coded UI has two different ways feature to test your applications
  1. Coded UI Record and Playback
  2. Coded UI Hand coding (which will involve intense coding)
The way Coded UI automation is designed by Microsoft is to target both the non-programmers as well as programmers to work with Coded UI. Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) uses Coded UI Record and Playback feature to record all the user action and save it as a test case, which can then be used to replay while executing the test case. Coded UI Hand coding is used prevalently while designing custom frameworks while working with larger projects.

Coded UI for Windows Mobile

The coded UI for Windows mobile is available from Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 and later, which mean all the Visual studio 2013 user, need to go for Update 2 or later (latest is Update 4) for getting the Coded UI for Windows Mobile.
Note But the only limitation is, currently only mobile application developed with XAML us supported by Coded UI, other technologies like WinJS, Silverlight or HTML5 are not supported.
 

Coded UI for Windows Stores

The Coded UI for Windows Store application currently supported in Windows 8 and 8.1, also, it support only XAML applications not WinJS. That’s all folks, I hope this article should have given you a getting started introduction of Coded UI in Visual Studio. Please leave your comments!!! Thanks, Karthik KK

Post Author: Karthik kk

24 Replies to “An Introduction to Coded UI Test(CUIT)”

  1. Hi Karthik, Can you please help me how to find the controls in Chrome and FF by using the cross-hairs from UI Test Builder. Below are the Versions which i have in my system.
    * Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate.
    * Chrome version 42.0.2
    * FF 37.0.1
    * Also downloaded/installed the Cross-browser extensions.

  2. Hi Karthik,
    Are there any best books on coded ui?

    could you please suggest me.

    Awaiting for the earliest reply.

  3. Hello Karthik,

    I have a question regarding Scrollbar. I am trying to scroll down a page which is in Div Pane. I am unable to figure out as to how we can scroll down. I tried few ways but didn’t work out. Would you please record a video as to how to scroll down the page using hand coding.

    Thank you.
    Padma

  4. Hi Karthik,
    Your videos are really useful.
    Actually I have a question. We are automating a really large web applications with 100s of pages in coded UI. The test will be data driven and there will be many webelements to work with. What type of framework do you suggest for data driven testing of those. Client is not really confident about using excel for object repository and data files because of performance and other issues.
    Any idea would be helpful

    1. HI Sam,

      I would request you to wait for another couple of days, you are not just one, there are 100’s of people asking me the same question.

      I am releasing a new course on Advanced framework development in Coded UI, you should be intimated soon.

      Thanks for patience !!!

      Thanks,
      Karthik KK

  5. Hi Karthik,

    Could you please answer following questions of mine?

    1. As of my research, for Coded UI we need Visual Studio Ultimate or Visual Studio Enterprise, but I am using profession version. Is there any other alternatives instead of buying Enterprise Edition?

    2. And why don’t we have record option enabled for Windows UWP and Windows Phone application?

    It will be great a help if you clarify these queries.
    Thanks,
    Vinod

    1. 1. As of my research, for Coded UI we need Visual Studio Ultimate or Visual Studio Enterprise, but I am using profession version. Is there any other alternatives instead of buying Enterprise Edition?
      Ans: No Alternative, its by model of Microsoft.

      2. And why don’t we have record option enabled for Windows UWP and Windows Phone application?
      Ans: Again, its not very common by most, soon Xamarin will overtake these two options as well.

      Thanks,
      Karthik KK

  6. Karthik,

    Could you please tell me if Coded UI supports UWP application in windows 10?

    In both Windows desktop and windows Phone?

    Thanks

  7. Hi Karthik,

    Can we make individual test scripts against each test cases using Coded UI?
    I am not able to locate the same anywhere yet.


    Regards
    Ekvinder Singh

  8. Which cource or training should I take to become proficient in ms coded ui *i am a non developer* can I able to use it being a non developer ?

    I will appreciate your reply
    Thanks

    1. Hi Abu ibraheem,

      Being non-developer doesn’t matter, but understanding the code matters, which you can be even a manual QA engineer. Coded UI has more code than any automation testing tool, hence in introduction I mentioned you need to have good development understanding knowledge.

      As that said, you can go with Coded UI even as non-developer, as I AM.

      Thanks,
      Karthik KK

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