If you work in the field of testing/QA then it is likely that you have encountered test automation in one form or another. Maybe you have embraced it and have gained expertise. Or maybe you’ve avoided it because you’re hoping it’s a fad that will fade away. I’m guessing most of you would like to learn it but don’t know where to start. My goal is simple: to demystify the subject by taking a novice tester with no coding experience through the process of writing a simple automated test using the Page Object framework in Ruby/Cucumber. I will take a volunteer from the audience and transform that person from an ordinary QA professional (or whatever their occupation) into an automation engineer in one short hour. Don’t be afraid; the code will not bite. Much.

1. Page Object From the Ground Up
Joseph Beale
02/07/2017

2. Agenda
1. Prepare the Environment
2.Build Automated Test using Watir
3.Convert to Page Object
4.Final Test Run
5.Q&A and Fun Time

3. But first...
Could I have a volunteer from the audience?

4. Environment
Create a folder called “test_project” under
c:rubyprograms

5. Environment
Inside of test_project, create a folder called
“features”. Then inside of that, create three
more called “step_definitions”, “support”,
and “pages”.

6. Environment
Open up the features -> support folder and
create a new text file called “env.rb”.

7. Environment
This demonstration will require you to have
Ruby installed on your system. For this, go
to https://rubyinstaller.org/ and download
the necessary installer. Then follow the
directions there.
After installing Ruby, grab the Cucumber
gem by typing “gem install cucumber” at a
command prompt.

8. Environment
We will need two more gems for this
demonstration:
• rspec
• page-object
Q: What is a Ruby gem?
A: A pre-built code module that performs
some useful function in Ruby, available for
free from https://rubygems.org

9. Environment
Open up env.rb using Notepad++ (free
download) and add the following
statements:
Require statements tell Ruby that you are
going to use some extra code modules.

10. Build
Create a feature file and a test scenario:
Cucumber scenarios are written in ordinary
business language using Gherkin
keywords (“Feature:”, “Scenario:”, “Given”,
“When”, “Then”, “And”, “But”).

11. Build
Optional: Create a batch file to execute
your test.

12. Build
These commands tell the operating system
to:
1.Open up a new command prompt in the
current directory
(c:rubyprogramstest_project).
2.Execute the “cucumber” command
3.Create a new report called “report.html”
and format it as an html document.
4.Open up the report.

13. Build
You can go ahead and run the test with no
other effort. It will not do much, but
Cucumber will give you a head start:

14. Build
Create a file called “my_steps.rb” in the
step_definitions folder and paste the
helper code snippets there:

15. Build
First step:
Given I am on the Bing home page
To satisfy this step, we need to open a
browser and navigate to the Bing home
page.
How do we do this in Ruby?

16. Build using Watir
Source: https://watir.github.io/

17. Build using Watir
Right on the front page is the code we
need to create a browser object (along
with lots of other helpful code):
We will use these exact lines of code but
modify them for our purposes.

18. Build using Watir
We will create “$browser” using the code
they gave us, but we will put it in the
env.rb file so that it is created before any
of the steps are run:

19. Build using Watir
Q: Why did you put a ‘$’ in front of your object
name?
A: To indicate that it is a global variable.
We want the browser object to be accessible
to all steps, so we make it global.

20. Build using Watir
In the first step definition, we will put the
next line of code, but modified to reflect
our global browser object and the URL for
Bing.com:
Now when we run our test we will get...

21. Build using Watir
...the Bing home page!

22. Build using Watir
Note that our report now shows one step is
green, meaning that it has passed:

23. Build using Watir
A quick word about method calls: the
format for calling a method in Ruby is
(object name) + dot (‘.’) + (method name).
So in the method call below, the object
name is ‘$browser’ and the method name
is ‘goto’.

24. Build using Watir
The ‘goto’ method is just one of the pre-
defined methods inside of the Watir::Browser
class. The method takes one argument: a
URL (because it needs to know where to “go
to”).
Arguments can be passed either inside of
parentheses or alongside a method call. So
in the previous example we could have said:
$browser.goto(‘bing.com’)

25. Build using Watir
Second step:
When I search the phrase "Call me Ishmael"
To automate this step, we need to interact
with two elements on the page:
1. The search text field
2. The search button (indicated by the
magnifying glass icon).

26. Build using Watir
Watir has several methods in the Browser
class to interact with the elements that are
common to most web pages. The two we
need are listed in the example given on their
home page (right under the ‘goto’):

27. Build using Watir
To interact with the two search elements, we
will use the ‘text_field’ and ‘button’ methods.
These two methods each take one argument:
a locator as indicated by the syntax (locator:
‘unique_identifier’).
For example:
$browser.text_field(id: ‘my_id’).set ‘my text’
$browser.button(id: ‘my_button’).click

28. Build using Watir
The locators are part of the page’s
Document Object Model or DOM, which is
a model of the page’s html code. But you
don’t need to understand the underlying
code; all you need to know is how to
inspect your desired elements.

29. Build using Watir
If you are using Chrome browser, you can
activate DevTools in three ways:
Source:
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/

30. Build using Watir
Inspecting the search box yields:

31. Build using Watir
The most common locator to use is ‘id’, so
we will copy the value for the id locator
(“sb_form_q”) and use it in our code for
the text_field method.

32. Build using Watir
Once nice feature of Ruby method calls is the
ability to “chain” methods one right after
another. Ruby will execute them in the order
given, from left to right. That is what you see
in the text_field example:
The ‘set’ method is executed right after the
text_field method.

33. Build using Watir
You can use the ‘set’ method anytime you
have defined a text field element using the
‘text_field’ method. It takes one argument: the
word or phrase that you wish to place in the
field. So, substituting a helpful variable name
like “search_phrase” for “arg1” in the code
snippet, the code for our second step looks
like this:

34. Build using Watir
Q: Where does the value for
“search_phrase” come from?
A: It is passed into the code from the
Gherkin step using a capture group.
This cryptic bit of code "([^"]*)" grabs
whatever is between the double-quotes
and throws it into my given variable.

35. Build using Watir
Since the variable search_phrase is a string,
we can use it as an argument for the set
method. And so then we are able to use that
same Ruby code block no matter what
phrase is used in the Gherkin.
Step →
Step definition →

36. Build using Watir
Now running the test yields:

37. For the button element, we’ll do it exactly
like we did the text field except that
instead of using the set method we will
need to find a method that will click the
button. The method name in this case is -
surprise! - click. From the Watir site:
browser.button(type: 'submit').click

38. Build using Watir
For most buttons, the locator they are using
(type: ‘submit’) will work but it’s not
specific enough so we’ll use the id to
locate the field. Adding that and the dollar
sign for the global variable, our step
definition looks like this:

39. Build using Watir
Running again we get:

40. Build using Watir
And in the report two steps are now green:

41. Build using Watir
Third step:
Then I will see results that contain “Moby
Dick”
Somehow we need to get our code to
examine the result page and check to see
if our phrase “Moby Dick” is found
anywhere. This is where the RSpec gem
comes in handy.

42. Build using Watir
There are many different ways to compare
fields using RSpec, but the one we will use
is a combination of “should” and “include”.
To locate the results area, we found that
we can use the ‘div’ method and an id of
‘b_content’.

43. Build using Watir
Running again causes all steps to pass:

44. Why Page Object
The Problem: If you have multiple tests or
even multiple steps that use the same
page elements, it’s tedious to keep having
to locate them by id again and again.
The Solution: Store all of the attributes for
any given page in one place, assign them
labels, and then in your steps simply refer
to the pages and the labels.

45. Convert to Page Object
The Page Object gem requires some
additional lines of code in the env.rb file:
Hint: code it and forget it.

46. Convert to Page Object
For each page where we need to interact
with fields or other attributes, we will need
to create a class (blueprint for an object):

47. Convert to Page Object
When we create a class to represent a
page, we are creating a situation where
the attributes of the page are already
defined and they are just waiting for the
page object to be instantiated by creating
a new instance of the class. Once that is
done, the user has access to all of the
attribute methods.

48. Convert to Page Object
Digging into the code for the two page
classes:

49. Convert to Page Object
Q: Why use ‘include’?
A: This will pull all of the standard Page
Object methods into your class.
http://www.rubydoc.info/github/cheezy/page-object/PageObject/Accessors

50. Convert to Page Object
For example:

51. Convert to Page Object
Here is what our steps will look like:

52. Convert to Page Object
Special Page Object Methods
visit - grabs the URL passed to the
‘page_url’ method and executes a ‘goto’
method on it.
on_page or on - instantiates the named
page and allows you to access its
attributes and their methods.

53. Final Test Run
Running again, we see the steps are still
green:

54. Questions/Answers
Does anyone have a question?

55. Let’s Stay In Touch
Contact me:
joseph.beale92@gmail.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/JosephBealeQA
Follow me on Twitter: @JosephBealeQA