Winappdriver crashes when a child window is opened

[shoaibmansoor]

Hi @DHowett @kat-y

I am using winappdriver 1.2 RC with appium to automate a windows application.
It works perfectly fine unless a child window opens up after several operations on the application.
As soon as the child window is opened up, getting a screenshot on that screen works but any other operation like find_element by any strategy or even getting page_source causes
Encountered element sharing the same runtimeId exception.

What are things I have tried:

1. I read link and tried to downgrade to 1.1 but the issue was reproducible.
2. I upgraded to v1.2.1, able to reproduce the same issue.
3. I tried setting experimental capabilities appCapabilities.SetCapability("ms:experimental-webdriver", true) with all driver version combinations and the issue was still reproducible.
4. Tried desktop session but the same runtime ids exception is being thrown.
5. Using winappdriver with/without appium

Below are artifacts of my execution:
Execution Video: link
Execution log: link
Page Source: link

One important finding is that - if I perform all the steps manually (instead of using a script) I am able to get the page source but when I reach the child window by performing operations by writing script(includes click, sendkeys) then it throws the exception shared above. In my opinion, winappdriver somehow caches window elements, and when a child window opens up then runtime ids of the new screen clashes with cached element ids.

This has been a showstopper for me, I am unable to move ahead with this issue.
Kindly look into this issue and let me know if I can any provide some other information to resolve this issue.

Thanks
Shoaib Mansoor
[email protected]

[anunay1]

Both your parent and the child window and the parent window elements have the same runtime id, you can save both the run time id and the use driver.FindElementById()

[shoaibmansoor]

Hi @anunay1 Thanks for the reply.

May I ask how can I save runtime ids?
Even getting page_source on that screen causes winappdriver to crash.

[Shakevg]

@shoaibmansoor Looks like it is a known issue in WinAppDriver #632