Question

The UI Automation framework has a base class, AutomationElement, that has a property, ItemStatus, that can be used to store arbitrary strings. I’m trying to get that property from the Visual Studio 2010 Coded UI Tests base class, UITestControl.

Answer 1

Look at the Coded UI Tests generated code for WpfControl. It has a property, NativeElement. This property is an AutomationElement.

public abstract class WpfControl : UITestControl
{
    ...

    public virtual object NativeElement
    {
        get
        {
            return ((object)(this.GetProperty(UITestControlProperties.Common.NativeElement)));
        }
    }

    ...
}

You can write an extension method to cast it and get ItemStatus.

public static string GetItemStatus(this WpfControl control)
{
    var automationElement = (AutomationElement)control.NativeElement;
    return automationElement.Current.ItemStatus;
}

I am not certain why NativeElement is recorded as an object (which makes the getter cast redundant). All WPF controls’ NativeElement are of type AutomationElement. I would suggest editing the generated code and simply calling control.NativeElement.Current.ItemStatus directly.