UI Automation Id for Qt

Qt patches that add support for defining the AutomationId property in Qt Widget and Qt Quick controls on Windows for Automated Testing.

• Introduction
• Applying the patches
• Usage
• FAQ

Introduction

Qt has built-in support for accessiblity, but unfortunately it's not a pluggable architecture. The accessbility feature is baked into the QWidget and QQuickItem classes. Thus, source code level pacthing is needed to expose this new property.

Two patches are provided:

• QtBase module patch to add the AutomationId property for QWidgets and to add the platform backend support.
• QtDeclarative module patch to add the AutomationId property for QQuickItems via the Accessible attached property.

The QtDeclarative patch is optional, but it requires the patch for QtBase since that patch adds the platform backend support.

Applying the patches

You'll need the git command line tool or the patch command line tool. Obtain the available patch that is equal or lower than your minor version of Qt in the Releases. For instance, if patching Qt 6.2.5 then the patches for Qt 6.2.4 (or a lower 6.2.x) can be used if 6.2.5 is not available.

Obtain the Qt source code and then apply one or both patches.

With git:

C:\Qt\Sources> git apply qt-ui-automation-id-qtbase.patch
C:\Qt\Sources> git apply qt-ui-automation-id-qtdeclarative.patch

With patch:

C:\Qt\Sources> patch -Np1 -i qt-ui-automation-id-qtbase.patch
C:\Qt\Sources> patch -Np1 -i qt-ui-automation-id-qtdeclarative.patch

Then build Qt.

Usage

QWidgets and derived classes will now have the automationId property.

    QPushButton button1;
    button1.setAutomationId("MyButton");

Getting or setting the automationId property via Qt Meta Object is also supported.

QQuickItem objects also support setting the automationId property via the Accessible attached property.

    Button {
        text: "Press me"
        Accessible.automationId: "MyButton"
    }

FAQ