How easily will Watir interact with a ZK interface? If "not at all" do you have any recommendations for automated testing of the web interface for me?
Edit: Another way to put this would be can I test a Spring/ZK generated page (Ajax/JScript). I found another issue too: I need not to use a proxy to test (like Sahi does) if at all possible.
Edit: I have been testing ZK interfaces now for quite some time. With a higher knowledge of Watir (and now webdriver) I can say it's definitely possible. Timing isn't usually an issue, but finding the elements certainly can be as the ids are dynamically generated. I recommend a strong, maintainable, object oriented approach with a powerful and dynamic DSL, or you'll be listing every element on the page in a custom built object library of some sort. So... it works, but it needs extra effort.
If you're talking about this: http://zssdemo.zkoss.org/ you can take a look at the DOM output, it's atrocious, but possible to test it with Watir. I've dealt with some apps that generate awful output like that. It makes for a challenge. :) Search the Watir google group for testing Ajax, plenty of people do it.
HTH,
Charley
Related
I am trying to create shipping labels for a lot of different customers by filling forms on ups website. Is there a programmatic way of doing this?
It is different from the usual auto-fill web form. Because the name, address, etc. fields aren't filled with "constants". 100 customers needs 100 different forms.
Before I dig into python-mechanize, or autoit IE.au3, is there an easier way doing this?
UPDATE 2019-09-09: Generally, would no longer recommend FF.au3 unless you're very much into AutoIt or have tons of legacy code. I'd rather suggest using Selenium with a "proper" programming language.
You could check out FF.au3 for AutoIt. Together with FireFox and MozRepl it allows for web automation, including dynamic websites/forms.
The feature-set should be sufficient for your task (eg. XPath for content extraction and for filling out forms, but just have a look at the link and you'll get an idea of what it can do). It's also fairly easy to use.
The downside is that it's not the most performant approach and I've encountered a bug, but that doesn't say much. Overall it did work well for me for small or medium-ish projects.
Setup:
Install AutoIt: https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit-tools/
Get the FF.au3 lib: https://www.thorsten-willert.de/index.php/software/autoit/ff/ff-au3
Get an old Firefox version <v57 or ESR (see remarks on ff.au3 page above)
Install MozRepl: http://legacycollector.org/firefox-addons/264678/index.html
There is a repository of tests for the Mozilla addons site, although it's written using Selenium. I'd like to know if there are any real-world examples available for Watir, so I can see how the framework is implemented by professionals?
This is a more general question about how one goes about building a suite of tests for a website in Watir. On a superficial level, one can write a bunch of seperate .rb files with crude error reporting and fire them all off; but I'd like to know more about writing actual classes and proper test structures that raise issues and return reports. How is this done? Are there any books on this? Tutorials?
Check out WatirMelonCucumber - a set of watir-webdriver tests against google and bing, and also EtsyWatirWebDriver - a set of watir-webdriver tests against Etsy.com
The watir Wiki has a selection of tutorials, examples etc as well.
Start Here
Learning More
Wiki homepage
Those are however fairly basic and don't get into the 'how to organize things' level.
In that case there are a number of frameworks in various states of development. The most active ones are I think are perhaps Taza, and QA Robusta. Each of them approaches things a little differently. QA Robusta is wrapped a bit around Minitest (if I understand things right) and provides it's own reporting. I'm still learning about Taza so can't really comment on it much. I also recall hearing about a 'WatirSpash' gem/framework that was discussed in a recent watir podcast which is designed to help watir use along with RSpec (and I might presume Cucumber)
If you are a BDD/Spec-by-example sort, then you may want to use either (or both) RSpec or Cucumber perhaps in combination with the WatirSpash gem as a way to organize and describe you tests, and then implement the actual test code via Watir, In that case you would likely be using the HTML based reports that can be generated by RSpec/Cucumber instead of rolling your own or depending on a watir framework for the reporting.
More Watir frameworks:
https://github.com/jarmo/WatirSplash
https://cyberconnect.biz/opensource/qa_robusta.html
Not in active development:
https://github.com/scudco/taza
https://github.com/bret/watircraft
QA Robusta most likely will not have too many new features added but will be supported. Instead you may want to check out whirlwind. Whirlwind uses similar concepts as other frameworks such as qa_robusta and taza, but is lighter weight and tailored around cucumber/rspec. See the walk through for a google search example.
I am trying to learn java web programming. I come from a perl scripting background and know very little Java, much less JSF/Seam/EJB3.0. I've made a LOT of progress in this very steep learning curve, but there are some large conceptual issues that I think are hampering me a bit.
Lately I've turned my attention to learning JSF. Usually discussions of JSF include a description of component-based web programming, but seem to assume one has experience with the other paradigms of web programming. I would be interested to see a fuller discussion of this component-based paradigm in the context of other paradigms.
Can someone explain?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
TDR
The basic idea is just an extension of Object Oriented Design: Separate the concerns of your program. The same way you may make several different PERL scripts and string them together to do work, we will make several different JSF components and string them together to do work.
Let's take a simple registration form as an example. I want to know your name, your birth date, your address and submit this all to the back end to do work.
First thing we need to do is break up your form into logical pieces. If we knew we were going to reuse this exact form in a lot of different places, maybe this form itself would be a logical piece. In which case we could create a component that would render this whole form and tie it to a bean like "Contact." That way, any time you needed to use the form, you could dump it in, tie it to a Contact bean (the how would depend on your framework) and go from there. But that would make this a pretty dull example. :)
From my estimation I see name, birth date and address as three seperate, logical units. Name would probably be simple. Just a standard text input. So we can use a h:inputText element, or your framework's prefered version, and tie that to your bean's name field.
Second, we have the birth date. At its simplest, we can create a h:inputText field and add a f:converter element so that when we tie it to the bean, it will come out a date. You can scale this up to be a fully interactive calendar widget, complete with Java Script and what not. Check out IceFaces and RichFaces for some good examples. But the same core concept remains: A single component which you will tie to a date object.
Third, we have the address. This makes a great choice for a component, because likely you will need to know addresses in a lot of different pages. It's also a lot more complex than a single input. You'll need to combine multiple inputs, validations and fun ajaxy stuff to make a single cohesive unit. However, the developer who uses it will hopefully only need to do use
<foo:address value="#{BarBean.address}"/>
with maybe a couple of other options.
This seperation of concerns is at the core of not only Component based web design but object oriented programming itself. There are plenty of tools to make this easier too! Facelets is a great example. You can seperate your basic layout into its own sheet, simply injecting the useful content via the ui:define elements. You can create composition components that allow you to quickly create more useful components without delving into the JSF component framework; the address example would be very simple to do with a Facelets composition component. IceFaces is another good example. It handles all sorts of AJAXy type inputs, redraws and updates without me having to worry about how it all works (for the most part. ;) letting me focus on what the form is to accomplish, not how to accomplish the form.
This only scratches the surface but the broadest strokes are similar to any large program: Identify the smallest, logical pieces and build them before using those to build bigger pieces.
I think that a good explanation would take a lot of effort. I'd suggest to get first your java skills straight, so you can understand the code examples that you'll encounter later when you try to follow tutorials from the web or even better buy a book.
In short:
JSF tries to give you the programming experience of a desktop application for a web based app.
Instead of having for example big JSPs you have lots of smaller components, that you can reuse.
The state of the page is preserved as much as possible even you do a real request (not just an ajax call) by transfering the state of the DOM components to and from the server.
JSF and Java EE in general is designed in such a way that large teams can split up the tasks into a more modular form.
Therefore, with components, instead of having multiple people working on the same .jsp or .xhtml page and the same Java backing bean class, components allow people to work on the same application without tripping over each other's feet.
When a new specification comes out (like HTML 5) it can be tempting to begin using its enhancements; however, how do you deal with the fact that not all browsers will be up to snuff with the latest and greatest specs? Surely, it's no fun having to code the same thing twice. While we can take advantage of things that degrade gracefully, isn't it just easier to use what's available to all of today's common browsers? What's your practice (or waiting period) for adopting new specs?
In the case of HTML5, I will probably no adopt it for any "core" functionnaly of a website before the required functionnalities are supported by the webbrowers used by something like 90% of my users -- which means, unfortunatly, not that soon for any "general" site :-(
Maybe when something like 80% of my users support the most imteresting parts, I'll start using those, and degrade gracefully for the others, though...
But you're not always the one deciding : your clients are often the ones who choose... And if they're stuck with IE6 because of company-policy and the like... and yes, there are too many users stuck on IE6, without the ability to upgrade / use anything else.
For instance, take the new <video> tag : how will you convince your clients that you should use it in their website, when they already have some embeded flash stuff that works just fine for more users than the ones who would be able to read the <video> tag ?
HTML5 is a special beast. A lot of times it simply specifies the common behaviour as implemented by the browsers, which means there are parts you are free to use just now. If you for example use the simple doctype or encoding declaration, you should be fairly safe as far as browsers go. Some other parts add behaviour that does not really need to be supported by the browser much, for example the custom data attributes. Yet some other parts of the specification can be easily implemented by javascript if the browser does not support them. In this sense you can adopt the advanced form handling, dropping the javascript solution once all the supported browsers implement it natively. So there’s definitely not a single answer that would help you, and more so in the case of HTML5.
Also see many of the questions under the html5 tag here on SO.
I won't use HTML 5 (which i really want to) until firefox and IE support it. Since most of my development is corporate internal, all that matters to me is IE. But externally, chrome (which is furthest along here) has the least amount of market share. If both firefox and IE support it, I am good.
I've been evaluating different Java Web Application UI Frameworks. I have about 8 months of intensive JSF experience that I'd like to continue using. JSF also provides me the spider-readable markup as well as the ability to create very simple forms without touching much Java code.
I also will have need for thick-client side interfaces that will perform well with few server round trips. GWT seemed like an ideal choice for this.
So, when I found G4jsf, I thought I had found the best of both worlds. However, I can't seem to find any active development on it. I hope it hasn't died, but it seems like that is the case.
Is there active development on this? Or am I two years too late?
Well, based on the conversation in the reference below, it seems that G4jsf is no longer being supported. If the poster is in fact Sergey Smirnov, I would imagine he'd be a pretty reliable source on the matter. :)
http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=150674