PyWinAuto still useful?

Question

I've been playing with PyWinAuto today and having fun automating all sorts GUI tests. I was wondering if it is still state of the art or if there might be something else (also free) which does windows rich client automation better.

Answer 1

pywinauto is great because it's Python.

Perhaps a bit more full featured is AutoIT, which has a COM server that you can automate (from Python using win32com), and some cool tools, like a "Window Info" utility, which will give you the text (title), class, size, status-bar text, and so on for the window currently under the mouse cursor.

There are some cases where pywinauto is a bit harder to use than AutoIt, and seems a little less polished. One example is automating Inno Setup programs. The Inno Setup "setup.exe" program launches a separate application that actually performs the install, and it's a pain to track this down with pywinauto, but AutoIt makes it easy.

Answer 2

I used to do test automation on our projects with AutoIt but switched over to pywinauto 3 months ago and have been very happy with that decision. There are some rough edges, but I've been able to fill them in with my own supplementary test functions. In addition I find that coding tests and support code in Python is much easier and more manageable compared to AutoIt. With Python I have way more powerful options for logging, debugging, documentation, process management and test configuration. For me it was absolutely the right way to go.