Watir is an open-source web application testing framework that is designed to make writing Selenium tests simple and efficient. Built on Selenium’s Ruby language bindings, Watir is able to drive the browser in the same way humans do. With all of the awesome features Selenium has to offer, the sky’s the limit as far as what you can do. Here, we explain how to incorporate the Watir testing framework with CrossBrowserTesting’s cloud automation platform. Let’s get started.
If you’re already familiar with Watir, and you have written tests, making them work with our tool is easy.
Before:
browser = Watir::Browser.new
Now:
browser = Watir::Browser.new(
:remote,
:url => "http://#{username}:#{authkey}@hub.crossbrowsertesting.com:80/wd/hub",
:desired_capabilities => caps)
Username here is the email address associated with your account, and authkey is the authorization key that can be found on the ‘Manage Account’ section of our site. Caps is the capabilities object that contains our api names for selecting OS/Browser and other options. Your capabilities should look something like this:
caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.new
caps["name"] = "Selenium Test Example"
caps["build"] = "1.0"
caps["browser_api_name"] = "IE10"
caps["os_api_name"] = "Win7x64-C2"
caps["screen_resolution"] = "1024x768"
caps["record_video"] = "true"
caps["record_network"] = "true"
A complete list of capabilities options can be found here:
If you’re new to Watir, and you’d like to start from scratch, you’ve come to the right place. First, we’ll need a couple of necessary Selenium libraries. Getting them is easy with Gem.
gem install selenium-webdriver gem install watir-webdriver
We’ll also be using Rest to make RESTful API calls with CrossBrowserTesting’s API.
gem install rest-client
Lastly, let’s use test-unit to perform functional unit tests on our platform.
gem install test-unit
Alright, we should be ready to get started. Let’s build a class called CBT_API that will make working with our API easy:
class CBT_API
@@username = 'you%40yourcompany.com'
@@authkey = '12345'
@@BaseUrl = "https://#{@@username}:#{@@authkey}@crossbrowsertesting.com/api/v3"
def getSnapshot(sessionId)
# this returns the the snapshot's "hash" which is used in the
# setDescription function
response = RestClient.post(@@BaseUrl + "/selenium/#{sessionId}/snapshots",
"selenium_test_id=#{sessionId}")
snapshotHash = /(?<="hash": ")((\w|\d)*)/.match(response)[0]
return snapshotHash
end
def setDescription(sessionId, snapshotHash, description)
response = RestClient.put(@@BaseUrl + "/selenium/#{sessionId}/snapshots/#{snapshotHash}",
"description=#{description}")
end
def setScore(sessionId, score)
# valid scores are 'pass', 'fail', and 'unset'
response = RestClient.put(@@BaseUrl + "/selenium/#{sessionId}",
"action=set_score&score=#{score}")
end
end
Now that we have our API object setup, we can set the score of our test to pass/fail, take snapshots whenever we need to, or even set the description so we can easily search for results later. We can now build our unit test. In this test, we’ll navigate to an example To-Do app, we’ll use some of the functionality of the app, then we’ll assert that the changes we made had the desired effect.
class CBT_Example < Test::Unit::TestCase
def test_todos
begin
username = 'you%40yourcompany.com'
authkey = '12345'
caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.new
caps["name"] = "Selenium Test Example"
caps["build"] = "1.0"
caps["browser_api_name"] = "IE10"
caps["os_api_name"] = "Win7x64-C2"
caps["screen_resolution"] = "1024x768"
caps["record_video"] = "true"
caps["record_network"] = "true"
browser = Watir::Browser.new(
:remote,
:url => "http://#{username}:#{authkey}@hub.crossbrowsertesting.com:80/wd/hub",
:desired_capabilities => caps)
session_id = browser.driver.session_id
score = "pass"
cbt_api = CBT_API.new
# maximize the window - DESKTOPS ONLY
# driver.manage.window.maximize
puts "Loading URL"
browser.goto ("http://crossbrowsertesting.github.io/todo-app.html")
puts "Clicking Checkbox"
# driver.find_element(:name, "todo-4").click
browser.checkbox(:name, "todo-4").set
puts "Clicking Checkbox"
# driver.find_element(:name, "todo-5").click
browser.checkbox(:name, "todo-5").set
# elems = driver.find_elements(:class, "done-true")
elems = browser.elements(:class, "done-true")
assert_equal(2, elems.length)
puts "Entering Text"
browser.text_field(:id => 'todotext').set("run your first selenium test")
# driver.find_element(:id, "todotext").send_keys("run your first selenium test")
browser.element(:id, 'addbutton').click
# driver.find_element(:id, "addbutton").click
# spanText = driver.find_element(:xpath, "/html/body/div/div/div/ul/li[6]/span").text
spanText = browser.element(:xpath, "/html/body/div/div/div/ul/li[6]/span").text
assert_equal("run your first selenium test", spanText, "Problem adding to-do")
"Archiving old to-dos"
# driver.find_element(:link_text, "archive").click
browser.element(:link_text, "archive").click
# elems = driver.find_elements(:class, "done-false")
elems = browser.elements(:class, "done-false")
assert_equal(4, elems.length, "Problem archiving to-dos")
puts "Taking Snapshot"
cbt_api.getSnapshot(session_id)
cbt_api.setScore(session_id, "pass")
rescue Exception => ex
puts ("#{ex.class}: #{ex.message}")
cbt_api.setScore(session_id, "fail")
ensure
# driver.quit
browser.close
end
end
end
As you can see from our test, we interact with the app, and then we assert that those changes were made. Rather than having to test this manually against each configuration, we can now easily run our test against any configuration and simply focus on the tests that failed. Thanks to Watir’s webdriver writing and extending these tests are easy and efficient. If you have any trouble, feel free to get in touch with us! We’re always happy to help.