What is ASCII and Why it's Helpful to Know
ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and it is a character encoding scheme based on the English alphabet.
Why does this matter?
For software development or automation of keyboard or mouse actions using automation tools like Unified functional testing or Selenium, this is very helpful.
For example, QuickTest Professional (QTP) and Unified Functional Testing (UFT) have two built-in functions (ASC and Chr) that are helpful to know when you need to work with ASCII info.
INDEX
What is ASCII and Why it's Helpful to Know
Common ASCII Codes (The Most Used By QTP, And UFT Or Any Other Tool) Image Source
Here are some of the most common QTP ASCII character codes I often use:
Chart for All the Valid Chr() Codes
How can you actually use this?
ASC() Function
Chr() Function
What about mouse and keyboard actions in UFT or QTP?
What about Sending Keyboard Keys using Selenium?
Common ASCII Codes (The Most Used By QTP, And UFT Or Any Other Tool)
Here are some of the most common QTP ASCII character codes I often use:
| QTP CODE | SYMBOL | DESCRIPTION |
| Chr(34) | “ | Double Quotes |
| Chr(10) | Line Feed | |
| Chr(13) | Carriage Return | |
| Chr(32) | Space |
Chart for All the Valid Chr() Codes
| QTP CODE | SYMBOL | DESCRIPTION |
| Chr(0) | NUL | Null char |
| Chr(1) | SOH | Start of Heading |
| Chr(2) | STX | Start of Text |
| Chr(3) | ETX | End of Text |
| Chr(4) | EOT | End of Transmission |
| Chr(5) | ENQ | Enquiry |
| Chr(6) | ACK | Acknowledgment |
| Chr(7) | BEL | Bell |
| Chr(8) | BS | Back Space |
| Chr(9) | HT | Horizontal Tab |
| Chr(10) | LF | Line Feed |
| Chr(11) | VT | Vertical Tab |
| Chr(12) | FF | Form Feed |
| Chr(13) | CR | Carriage Return |
| Chr(14) | SO | Shift Out / X-On |
| Chr(15) | SI | Shift In / X-Off |
| Chr(16) | DLE | Data Line Escape |
| Chr(17) | DC1 | Device Control 1 (oft. XON) |
| Chr(18) | DC2 | Device Control 2 |
| Chr(19) | DC3 | Device Control 3 (oft. XOFF) |
| Chr(20) | DC4 | Device Control 4 |
| Chr(21) | NAK | Negative Acknowledgement |
| Chr(22) | SYN | Synchronous Idle |
| Chr(23) | ETB | End of Transmit Block |
| Chr(24) | CAN | Cancel |
| Chr(25) | EM | End of Medium |
| Chr(26) | SUB | Substitute |
| Chr(27) | ESC | Escape |
| Chr(28) | FS | File Separator |
| Chr(29) | GS | Group Separator |
| Chr(30) | RS | Record Separator |
| Chr(31) | US | Unit Separator |
| Chr(32) | Space | |
| Chr(33) | ! | Exclamation mark |
| Chr(34) | “ | Double quotes (or speech marks) |
| Chr(35) | # | Number |
| Chr(36) | $ | Dollar |
| Chr(37) | % | Procenttecken |
| Chr(38) | & | Ampersand |
| Chr(39) | ‘ | Single quote |
| Chr(40) | ( | Open parenthesis (or open bracket) |
| Chr(41) | ) | Close parenthesis (or close bracket) |
| Chr(42) | * | Asterisk |
| Chr(43) | + | Plus |
| Chr(44) | , | Comma |
| Chr(45) | – | Hyphen |
| Chr(46) | . | Period, dot or full stop |
| Chr(47) | / | Slash or divide |
| Chr(48) | 0 | Zero |
| Chr(49) | 1 | One |
| Chr(50) | 2 | Two |
| Chr(51) | 3 | Three |
| Chr(52) | 4 | Four |
| Chr(53) | 5 | Five |
| Chr(54) | 6 | Six |
| Chr(55) | 7 | Seven |
| Chr(56) | 8 | Eight |
| Chr(57) | 9 | Nine |
| Chr(58) | : | Colon |
| Chr(59) | ; | Semicolon |
| Chr(60) | < | Less than (or open angled bracket) |
| Chr(61) | = | Equals |
| Chr(62) | > | Greater than (or close angled bracket) |
| Chr(63) | ? | Question mark |
| Chr(64) | @ | At symbol |
| Chr(65) | A | Uppercase A |
| Chr(66) | B | Uppercase B |
| Chr(67) | C | Uppercase C |
| Chr(68) | D | Uppercase D |
| Chr(69) | E | Uppercase E |
| Chr(70) | F | Uppercase F |
| Chr(71) | G | Uppercase G |
| Chr(72) | H | Uppercase H |
| Chr(73) | I | Uppercase I |
| Chr(74) | J | Uppercase J |
| Chr(75) | K | Uppercase K |
| Chr(76) | L | Uppercase L |
| Chr(77) | M | Uppercase M |
| Chr(78) | N | Uppercase N |
| Chr(79) | O | Uppercase O |
| Chr(80) | P | Uppercase P |
| Chr(81) | Q | Uppercase Q |
| Chr(82) | R | Uppercase R |
| Chr(83) | S | Uppercase S |
| Chr(84) | T | Uppercase T |
| Chr(85) | U | Uppercase U |
| Chr(86) | V | Uppercase V |
| Chr(87) | W | Uppercase W |
| Chr(88) | X | Uppercase X |
| Chr(89) | Y | Uppercase Y |
| Chr(90) | Z | Uppercase Z |
| Chr(91) | [ | Opening bracket |
| Chr(92) | \ | Backslash |
| Chr(93) | ] | Closing bracket |
| Chr(94) | ^ | Caret – circumflex |
| Chr(95) | _ | Underscore |
| Chr(96) | ` | Grave accent |
| Chr(97) | a | Lowercase a |
| Chr(98) | b | Lowercase b |
| Chr(99) | c | Lowercase c |
| Chr(100) | d | Lowercase d |
| Chr(101) | e | Lowercase e |
| Chr(102) | f | Lowercase f |
| Chr(103) | g | Lowercase g |
| Chr(104) | h | Lowercase h |
| Chr(105) | i | Lowercase i |
| Chr(106) | j | Lowercase j |
| Chr(107) | k | Lowercase k |
| Chr(108) | l | Lowercase l |
| Chr(109) | m | Lowercase m |
| Chr(110) | n | Lowercase n |
| Chr(111) | o | Lowercase o |
| Chr(112) | p | Lowercase p |
| Chr(113) | q | Lowercase q |
| Chr(114) | r | Lowercase r |
| Chr(115) | s | Lowercase s |
| Chr(116) | t | Lowercase t |
| Chr(117) | u | Lowercase u |
| Chr(118) | v | Lowercase v |
| Chr(119) | w | Lowercase w |
| Chr(120) | x | Lowercase x |
| Chr(121) | y | Lowercase y |
| Chr(122) | z | Lowercase z |
| Chr(123) | { | Opening brace |
| Chr(124) | | | Vertical bar |
| Chr(125) | } | Closing brace |
| Chr(126) | ~ | Equivalency sign – tilde |
| Chr(127) | Delete |
How can you actually use this?
ASC() Function
ASC() is a QTP function that returns the code of the character passed to it. For example, if you wanted to know what the ASCII/ANSI code for the pound symbol #:
Msgbox Asc(“#”),
The above will return the code 35
Chr() Function
If you wanted to enter or search for the pound key in a string, you would use the QTP Chr() function. This function will return the character associated with the code passed to it. For example,
Msgbox Chr(35)
will return the pound sign.
That's not all…
What about mouse and keyboard actions in UFT or QTP?
There may be a time when you actually need to perform mouse or keyboard actions using screen coordinates. For a step-by-step example of how to do this with QuickTest Professional or Unified Functional Testing check out:
QTP Secret Code Chart Revealed For DeviceReplay PressKey, KeyDown, KeyUp and PressNKeys
Or
3 Ways to use keyboard input in QuickTest Professional or Unified Functional Testing
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What about Sending Keyboard Keys using Selenium?
If you're using Selenium for your test automation and you need to pass a keypress as you do in QTP, you're in luck.
Selenium has a send_keys command to send a keypress.
First, you need to import the org.openqa.selenium.Keys; library. Then, when you create your script, use the
.sendKeys(Keys.ENUM) syntax.
Here are some valid values you can pass:
| ADD | ALT | ARROW_DOWN ARROW_LEFT | ARROW_RIGHT ARROW_UP | BACK_SPACE | CANCEL |
| CLEAR | COMMAND | CONTROL | DECIMAL | DELETE | DIVIDE |
| DOWN | END | ENTER | EQUALS | ESCAPE | F1 |
| F10 | F11 | F12 | F2 | F3 | F4 |
| F5 | F6 | F7 | F8 | F9 | HELP |
| HOME | INSERT | LEFT | LEFT_ALT | LEFT_CONTROL | LEFT_SHIFT |
| META | MULTIPLY | NULL | NUMPAD0 | NUMPAD1 | NUMPAD2 |
| NUMPAD3 | NUMPAD4 | NUMPAD5 | NUMPAD6 | NUMPAD7 | NUMPAD8 |
| NUMPAD9 | PAGE_DOWN | PAGE_UP | PAUSE | RETURN | RIGHT |
| SEMICOLON | SEPARATOR | SHIFT | SPACE | SUBTRACT | TAB and UP |
* For more advanced actions check out the Advanced User Interactions post on SeleniumHQ
* Make sure to also check out 3 ways to use keyboard input in QuickTest Professional: Type, SendKeys and Device Replay for other ideas similar to using the ASCII methods.
* Entering/Reading ASCII codes – when using Unified Functional Testing, previously known as Quick Test Professional (QTP) – is sometimes needed to achieve certain functionality. (For Selenium, check out Send_Keys)
