eValid™ -- Automated Web Quality Solution Browser-Based, Client-Side, Functional Testing & Validation, Load & Performance Tuning, Page Timing, Website Analysis, and Rich Internet Application Monitoring.

Introduction
This page describes how eValid handles frame path naming. See also the Script Principles description.

Web pages can have no frames or they can have frames (including iframes) of any number and arranged in any hierarchy. In some applications, frames are received in the web page in different order from download to download. This behavior is rare, but usually is easy to deal with by choosing to record and process all frame paths with frame names (rather than frame numbers).

• If you have no frames the "" is the correct frame path.
• In some cases eValid commands allow for an optional frame path specification. Check the syntax of each command individually.
• If you have some frames then eValid command depend on knowing where to do their work and these commands then need to have the "frame_path" specified.
• If you have frames inside frames then eValid needs to know the specific path to the frame to which the command applies.
• Two (or more) frames could (in concept, but rarely in practice) have the same name and that is OK so long as the same-named frames are children of different parents.

The eValid setting that determins whether you record/play with frame numbers or frame names is called "Record Frame Names as Ordinal Values", which is the default. This option is set in the Record Settings area.

Frame Path Determination
The general structure of eValid commands is as follows:

command wid idx modifier [ modifier ] { frame_path } [ NAV | NO_NAV ]

where,

• frame_path is the name of the frame and/or the frame_path sequence.

• eValid uses "name:title" for labeled frames (if they have a non-blank title) and with "number:N" for unnamed frames, where N is a unique frame number (ordinal number) that depends on the frame position within the actual frameset for the page.

• The value of N starts with 0 (for the first encountered frame) and increases by +1, e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4..., in an order that is internally determined and is unique to the page properties.

• Note that the frame_path will always be expressed in terms of an ordinal the "number:N" format if you have chosen the "Record Frame Names as Ordinal Values" setting in the eValid preferences.

• Also, in case a frame has no name, or in the case of an iframe which does not permit use of a frame name, then eValid will use the "number:N" format to make sure there is no ambiguity.

• If a frame is inside another frame, then the " >> " notation is used to identify the complete parentage of the frame within the page (that's the "frame_path"). For example, you might see: "number:0>>number:1>>number:14" to indicate that the frame in question is "number:14" and a sub-frame of "number:1", which in turn is a subframe of "number:0". This means that frame number:14 is inside frame number:1 which is inside frame number:0. This naming also applies when frames have natural names.

• In rare cases we have seen that frames change their ordinal number and while that is technically a true regression in most cases the change in order arises because of material added to or taken away from the page. If you expect this to happen you probably should use frame names.