View changes to test steps in MTM

Question

When you want to see the changes made to a test in MTM, you go the history tab, but it just gives you the whole "steps" field. There is no way, as far as I know, to see the actual steps that were changed.

Is there a tool available for it? What are my options?

Answer 1

Since internally test steps are represented as XML containing HTML, you'd need something capable of parsing this kind of thing (line breaks mine for readability):

<DIV>
  <P>Click edit icon</P>
</DIV>
<DIV>
  <P>User is directed to announcement edit page</P>
</DIV>
<DIV>
  <P>Click anywhere else on the widget header</P>
</DIV>
<DIV>
  <P>Widget visibility toggles between header-only and full</P>
</DIV>

Or - the raw database content (again, I've added line breaks for readability):

<steps id="0" last="2">
  <step id="1" type="ValidateStep">
    <parameterizedString isformatted="true">&lt;DIV&gt;&lt;P&gt;Click edit icon&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/DIV&gt;
    </parameterizedString>
    <parameterizedString isformatted="true">&lt;DIV&gt;&lt;P&gt;User is directed to announcement edit page&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/DIV&gt;
    </parameterizedString>
    <description></description>
  </step>
  <step id="2" type="ValidateStep">
    <parameterizedString isformatted="true">&lt;DIV&gt;&lt;P&gt;Click anywhere else on the widget header&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/DIV&gt;
    </parameterizedString>
    <parameterizedString isformatted="true">&lt;DIV&gt;&lt;P&gt;Widget visibility toggles between header-only and full&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/DIV&gt;
    </parameterizedString>
    <description></description>
  </step>
</steps>

Your best bet is to pull the text and run it through a text diff tool to find out what changed. As you can see from the internal representation of test steps, it's not trivial to figure out which step has changed.