Data Driven Coded UI Tests

Coded UI is automated tests which driven through the application UI. The coded UI test performs actions on the user interface controls for an application and verifies that specified controls display the correct values.

Assume you have a WPF application like below. You can enter the name and then press Go button. Then it'll show a label which has Hello Dilan like below.

Assume you have below UI steps like LaunchApplication, EnterTheName, AssertTheLabelValue and CloseApplication.

When you create a Action Record method like EnterTheName then Visual Studio will generate a class called EnterTheNameParams. Also for the assertions like AssertLabelValue Visual Studio will generate a class like AssertLabelValueExpectedValues. So you can create a test method like below.

After create a Coded UI test, you need to run that for different sets of data to test different conditions. To do that we can use a data source like CSV, Excel, XML, SQL Express and etc.
If you have VS 2010 open Test View window. In the properties of test, you can add a data connection string. So the rest of the code will generate by Visual Studio.

But if you have VS 2012, the Test Window has deprecated. So you have to manually add the data source and add the relevant attributes. For example, I have used Data.csv file like below.

Add Data.csv file in to the project.

Then insert the DataSource attribute directly in the code, in the line immediately above your test method. Also change the code to retrieve the values from data-source.

You don't have to add any loop to run the test for each condition. Coded UI will automatically handle that. So this test will be run for thee times, because there are three rows in the data source.