WPF UI Automation - Control Tree not poluated till region is clicked for a TabControl

Question

I am doing a UI automation for a WPF application using the Microsoft UI Automation library and it works well.

However my app has four screens in a TabControl. Even when I click the tab item through code its child control tree isnt populated. The only control I can see is the "thumb" Control. Same happens when I see the control tree with UISpy.

However if the window is clicked then all the controls appear. As a Workaround I am simulating a mouseclick through code and it works. I wanted to know if there is some better way of doing it.

Answer 1

I ran into a problem similar to this. What was happening was some data was being retrieved on threads and the controls were not generated at the point automation peers were generated. I would suggest if you have access to the code base for the application you are attempting to automate looking into whether threading is being used. In my specific case it was because BeginInvokes were used to retrieve the data, I switched them to Invokes and it worked fine.

Also from what I could tell the reason the controls were being show on mouse over was because the tool tip generated a popup and caused the automation peers to be updated.

Answer 2

Why don't you click the control using mouse events if that is what works.

(Now, if you still are having that problem..)

How to simulate Mouse Click in C#?