flaui-tests - locator forms and CI reference

Alternate locator forms and the CI workflow, kept out of the SKILL spine. See SKILL.md for the core launch, find, interact, and wait flow.

Sources: FlaUI Searching wiki, Microsoft Learn - UI Automation Overview.

Alternate locator forms

The lambda form (in SKILL.md) is the shortest and the upstream convention. Two equivalent forms resolve to the same UIA query:

// ConditionFactory form
var b = window.FindFirstDescendant(ConditionFactory.ByAutomationId("LoginButton"));

// Property + tree-scope form
var b3 = window.FindFirst(
    TreeScope.Descendants,
    new PropertyCondition(
        Automation.PropertyLibrary.Element.AutomationIdProperty, "LoginButton"));

Find method families (flauisearch)

• FindFirstChild / FindAllChildren - immediate children only.
• FindFirstDescendant / FindAllDescendants - full subtree.
• FindFirstNested / FindAllNested - multi-level condition arrays.

Condition constructors: ByAutomationId, ByName, ByText, ByClassName, ByControlType, plus boolean combinators AndCondition / OrCondition / NotCondition.

Locator-selection order (most stable first)

1. ByAutomationId - developer-set stable identifier per msuia2; locale-independent and theme-independent.
2. ByControlType + a nested condition - when no AutomationId is available, pair the control type (Button / Edit / ListItem) with another property.
3. ByName - last resort; localised apps change Name per language.

CI integration

Windows runner required - UIA is Windows-only per msuia2. windows-latest provides an interactive desktop session by default, required because UIA cannot drive Session-0 / non-interactive desktops. Self-hosted Windows-container runners need interactive logon + Auto-Login + an unlocked desktop.

# .github/workflows/flaui.yml
jobs:
  ui-tests:
    runs-on: windows-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
      - uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v4
        with: { dotnet-version: '8.0.x' }
      - name: Build app under test
        run: dotnet build src/MyApp -c Release
      - name: Run FlaUI tests
        run: dotnet test tests/MyApp.UiTests --logger "trx;LogFileName=ui.trx"
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        if: always()
        with:
          name: trx-results
          path: '**/ui.trx'