Attribute resolution

[juysu2]

In reference to documentation: http://pywinauto.github.io/docs/dev_notes.html#attribute-resolution, it say: app.dlg.control

what is the best way to acces to button "Purge": w_customer.tabfolder_customer.tabpage_invoices.tabfolder_years.tabpage_2015.Purge.Click() ?

app.w_customer.Purge.Click() # Exists tabpage_2014, tabpage_2013, ...
or
app.w_customer['tabfolder_customer'].['tabpage_invoices'].['tabfolder_years'].['tabpage_2015'].['Purge'].Click()

[airelil]

It's hard to give a concrete tips without knowing your GUI layout. Generally, I'd suggest you to stick to "Dialog.control" model and break it on several small basic steps. Something as following:

1. Get app object: app = app.start("path_to_your_app.exe")
2. Get the main dialog: dlg = app.top_window_() or dlg = app["window title"]
3. Get a tab control on the dialog: tab_ctrl = dlg["tab control name"]
4. Select the right tab page: tab_ctrl.Select("tab page name")
5. Run an action on the control on that page: tab_ctrl.Purge.Click()

Not sure if it applicable for your case but notice that .Net applications currently are only partially supported by Pywinauto.

[vasily-v-ryabov]

app.dlg.control means that control is found in the whole controls tree under the dialog. So further expansion is not supported. If you need to click a button on another tab, you may do something like that:

app.dlg.TabControl.Select("tab name")
app.dlg.Purge.Click()

This is much shorter than following a lot of tabs.

Some debugging tricks can be useful:

• app.dlg.PrintControlIdentifiers() method prints all available controls with corresponding access name for each one.
• app.dlg.control.WrapperObject() with just typed . (dot) will give you the most useful list of available methods for the control. There are 2 equivalent constructions: app.dlg.Purge.WrapperObject().Click() (for debugging) and app.dlg.Purge.Click() (for better readable scripts). But app.dlg.Purge is not equivalent to app.dlg.Purge.WrapperObject(). The first one is a description only (the control may not actually exist at some moment), while the wrapper object is for already found control.

[vasily-v-ryabov]

These tips and tricks can be moved to the documentation. So marking the issue as enhancement.

[vasily-v-ryabov]

This is explained in new Getting Started Guide.