Native Windows Recorder in Katalon Studio

The Native Windows Recorder gives you a seamless recording experience that is similar to Web Recorder.

Requirements

• This feature is supported on Windows only
• You have an active Katalon Studio Enterprise license
• You need to set up WinAppDriver. See Set up WinAppDriver
• Install Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 or later from Microsoft .NET Framework

Coordinate-based Recording

When using Native Windows Recorder, you can record and locate a Windows element by its relative coordinates. With the coordinate-based recording option enabled, click and rightClick actions are recorded as clickElementOffset and rightClickElementOffset actions respectively. The following keywords are supported:

• [Windows] Click Element Offset
• [Windows] Right-click Element Offset

With coordinates-based recording, Katalon Studio records an element's relative coordinates in addition to its selector. For instance, you want to click on the red X part to close a tab in Notepad. Katalon Recorder records the button's offsets (its relative coordinates to its top-left corner) as a set of parameters representing an X and Y offset, and save them in clickElementOffset. It uses them to identify the exact location to perform a click action during runtime.

Without that element's offsets, the test engine can only click on the button's center, resulting in a failed test.

Recording

1. Right-click on the Windows Recorder icon and select Native Windows Recorder to open the Native Windows Recorder windows.

   
   
   

2. The Native Windows Recorder dialog box is displayed. Specify the information at the CONFIGURATIONS section.

   Application File: the absolute path to the Windows Executable File (*.exe) on the testing machine. Click the Browse... button to locate the application file.

   
   
   

   To start a UWP application, the application's execute file should be:

   • ApplicationID if your app is published on Microsoft store
   • PackageFamilyName!Application ID if your app is still in development.

3. Click Start deploy and open the specified Windows application.

   
   
   

4. When you hover over an element of the AUT, Katalon Studio highlights the identified object with a red rectangle.

   
   
   

5. When you perform an action on the AUT, the action is recorded in the Recorded Actions section. The list of available actions is the same as Katalon Studio's built-in keywords. You can add any action, call another test case, and/or use Custom Keywords.

   
   
   

6. All of the specified actions above are recorded at the Recorded Actions section.

   In Captured Objects, you can view all elements captured during the recording session. Here you can customize the locator of a captured object by modifying it in the Locator tab of Object Properties. The captured objects’ locators are their absolute XPaths.

   
   
   

7. When you’re done with recording, click OK to save the recorded actions in Katalon Studio.

8. You will be prompted to save the captured objects in the Object Repository of Katalon Studio. Choose an existing folder or create a new one, then click OK to continue.

   
   
   

9. When you finish your recording session, export the recorded steps to a new test case.

   
   
   

10. Recorded objects and actions are saved in the test case.

    
    
    

Executing a test case

Remember to turn on the WinAppDriver before executing a test case.

Select the Windows icon in the Run button on the main Toolbar to execute the script.

The Windows test is executed with those recorded steps accordingly.