andthennothing.net

Selenium on Rails has moved.

Selenium on Rails has gotten way too little love lately, but now I just released an update.

#_login.rsel
open '/login'
type 'name', name
type 'password', password
click 'submit', :wait=>true

|includePartial|login|name=John Doe|password=eoD nhoJ|

include_partial 'login', :name => 'Jane Doe', :password => 'Jane Doe'.reverse

Also included in this release is two defect fixes to rake test:acceptance.

The first fix is from David Vollbracht which makes it possible to start the server automatically on *nix. You still have to start_server: true in config.yml since I can’t get it to work reliably on Windows (if anyone knows why, give me a ping).

The second fix is from Dave Hoover which adds support for Safari.

script/plugin update (or reinstall the plugin if that doesn’t work)

Let me know if it doesn’t work or if you want it to work differently!

Overview

Selenium on Rails provides an easy way to test Rails application with Selenium.

1. The Selenium files don’t have to pollute /public, they can stay in the Selenium gem or in /vendor/selenium.
2. No need to create suite files, they are generated on the fly—one suite per directory in /test/selenium (suites can be nested).
3. Instead of writing the test cases in HTML you can use a number of better formats (see Formats).
4. Loading of fixtures and wiping of session (/selenium/setup).

Installation

1. Selenium needs to be available. It could either be installed as a gem (gem install selenium) or in /vendor/selenium/.
2. Install Selenium on Rails: script/plugin install http://andthennothing.net/svn/public/selenium_on_rails/
3. If RedCloth is available the Selenese test cases can use it for better markup.
4. Run the Rakefile in the plugin’s directory to run the tests in order to see that everything works. (If RedCloth isn’t installed a few tests will fail since they assume RedCloth is installed.)
5. Create a test case: script/generate selenium login
6. Start the server: script/server -e test
7. Point your browser to http://localhost:3000/selenium
8. If everything works as expected you should see the Selenium test runner. The north east frame contains all your test cases (just one for now), and the north frame contains your test case.

win32-open3

win32-open3 is needed if you’re on Windows and want to run your tests as a Rake task (see test:acceptance), i.e. you don’t have to install it but it’s recommended.

You can build it from source or install the binary:

1. Download the latest version of win32-open3, open3-0.2.2.so at the time of this writing.
2. Open up irb and run this snippet: require ‘rbconfig’; include Config; puts CONFIG[‘sitearchdir’]
3. Create a win32 directory under the directory you got, e.g. c:\ruby\lib\ruby\site_ruby\1.8\i386-msvcrt
4. Rename the .so file to open3.so and put it in the win32 directory.
5. Profit! (unless you get an error when doing require ‘win32/open3’)

Formats

The test cases can be written in a number of formats. Which one you choose is a matter of taste. You can generate your test files by running script/generate selenium or by creating them manually in your /test/selenium directory.

Selenese, .sel

|open|/selenium/setup|
|open|/|
|goBack|

SeleniumIDE makes it super easy to record test and edit them.

RSelenese, .rsel

setup :fixtures => :all
open '/'
assert_title 'Home'
('a'..'z').each {|c| open :controller => 'user', :action => 'create', :name => c }

HTML/RHTML

You can write your tests in HTML/RHTML but that’s mostly useful if you have existing tests you want to reuse.

Partial test cases

If you have some common actions you want to do in several test cases you can put them in a separate partial test case and include them in your other test cases.

A partial test case is just like a normal test case besides that its filename has to start with _:

#_login.rsel
open '/login'
type 'name', name
type 'password', password
click 'submit', :wait=>true

|includePartial|login|name=John Doe|password=eoD nhoJ|

include_partial 'login', :name => 'Jane Doe', :password => 'Jane Doe'.reverse

<%= render :partial => 'login', :locals => {:name = 'Joe Schmo', :password => 'Joe Schmo'.reverse} %>

Configuration

There are a number of settings available. You make them by renaming config.yml.example to config.yml and make your changes in that file.

Environments

#config.yml
environments:
  - test
  - development

test:acceptance

You can run all your Selenium tests as a Rake task.

#config.yml
browsers:
  firefox: 'c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe'
  ie: 'c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe'

script/server -e test

rake test:acceptance

Todo

Standalone mode

More work is needed on test:acceptance on Windows to be able to start the server when needed.

user_extension.js

Selenium has support for user_extension.js which is a way to extend the functionality of Selenium. However there is currently no easy way to add such a file in Selenium on Rails.

More setup/teardown support?

Currently there is only support to load fixtures and to wipe the session in /selenium/setup. Is there a need for more kinds of setups or teardowns?

Not todo

Editor

Creating an editor for the test cases is currently considered out of scope for this plugin. SeleniumIDE does such a good job and has support for the Selenese format.

Credits

• Jon Tirsen—initial inspiration
• Eric Kidd—contribution of RSelenese

Contact

Jonas Bengtsson, jonas.b@home.se