Keysight Technologies has introduced the "Eggplant Find by Description" solution. This feature is part of "Eggplant Studio" and "Eggplant Functional" and enables developers to locate elements of a user interface based on a textual description rather than through image comparisons.

According to the company, this ensures that automated tests remain functional even after redesigns, design changes, or adjustments to screen resolution. The need to recreate screenshots for test scripts—which was often necessary in the past—is expected to be eliminated.

Less maintenance required for test scripts

According to Keysight, about half of all companies view the maintenance of test scripts as one of the biggest obstacles to test automation. In particular, image-based scripts often need to be updated when changes are made to the user interface, even though the actual software functionality has not changed.

The new solution is designed to work without screenshots, without access to the Document Object Model (DOM), and without making any changes to the system under test. Instead, the developer describes the desired user interface element—such as a ticket price for a specific date—which the software then identifies.

Shorter scripts and faster editing

In a company demonstration, Eggplant Find by Description reduced the size of a test script by 92%. At the same time, according to the company, the processing time was cut from more than an hour to less than 15 minutes.

The feature uses artificial intelligence and computer vision and is designed to be suitable for desktop, embedded, and web applications. Other benefits mentioned include greater test stability when changes are made to the user interface, reduced effort required to maintain test scripts, and the automation of tests that were previously performed manually.