Making Watir and Cucumber an
efficient tool for Web UI
Automation
Ruslan Strazhnyk
nCryptedCloud

About Me
Ruslan Strazhnyk
 Rich experience in creating Test Automation
Frameworks - Front-end, Back-end, API, Load
Testing
 Languages: Ruby, Python, Java, JS
 Technologies: Selenium, REST, CI, Jenkins, Jmeter

So many Frameworks?!

Why Not Robot Framework?
 Pros
 Similar to BDD/ATDD test writing
 Page Object implemented through Selenium2library
plugin
 Possible to write extensions in Python
 Produces output in html
 Cons
 Requires building own framework (with extensions)
 Requires learning RF own language for writing test
scenarios
 Indirect webdriver support through Selenium2library
 Tests are written in txt files

Experience with RF

Robot Framework

Robot Framework

Why not Behave?
 Pros
 BDD/ATDD is supported through Gherkin
 Libraries in Python
 Produces output in json and html
 Latest webdriver library supported
 More cucumber-like, better than RF in keyword logic
 Cons
 Page Object is not supported out-of-the-box
 Building custom framework layer required
 Only basic usage tutorials are available

Behave

Behave

Why not some fancy JS Framework?
Node.js + protractor.js + webdriver.js
 Pros
 BDD/ATDD is supported through Gherkin in cucumber.js
 Page-object through protractor.js
 Fresh and buzzy
 Robustly works with angular applications
 Output in html and json
 Cons
 Strong knowledge of JS required
 Only some basic tutorials available
 Immature frameworks, too many of them
 Has a high-entry point, more optimized for e2e testing

JavaScript Frameworks

JavaScript Frameworks

JavaScript Frameworks

Why
Ruby/Cucumber/PageObje
ct/Watir?
 Pros
 Full support of Cucumber
 Advanced Page-Object framework as a gem
 Rspec makes mocking and assertion more
advanced
 Excellence of both watir and webdriver
 Nice book fromJeff Morgan – “Cucumber and
Cheese”
 Cons
 Can be a separate language stack
 Learn other ruby gems for things like mysql, ssh and
so on

Advantages of Watir
 No xpath
 No Selenium IDE
 The power or Ruby
 Rich API

Page-object gem for Ruby
 https://github.com/cheezy/page-object
 Assists in creating flexible page-objects for testing
browser based applications
 Facilitates creation of abstraction layers in the
tests and makes decoupling easy
 Provides simple API interface to the elements on
a page

Page-object gem for Ruby
 Works with both watir-webdriver and selenium-
webdriver
 Robust way of dealing with Ajax Calls
 A clean way of handling JavaScripts pop-ups
 A simple way of dealing with Frames and iFrames
 Supports most HTML elements

Page Object
Define new page object
Add some methods, let’s say for login page

Creating Page Object
It is possible to create higher level methods that
hide implementation details even further
So usage of the page would become

Page Object Elements
 Button
 Cell
 Checkbox
 Div
 FileField
ttps://github.com/cheezy/page-object/wiki/Elements
 Form
 H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6
 Hidden Field
 Image
 Link

Page Object Elements
ttps://github.com/cheezy/page-object/wiki/Elements
 ListItem
 OrderedList
 Paragraph
 RadioButton
 SelectList (Dropdown)
 Span
 Table
 TableCell
 TextArea/TextField
 UnorderedList

Hooks
 Scenario hooks
 Before
 After
 Around
 Step hooks
 Tagged hooks
 Global hooks
 AfterConfiguration

Hooks
Before and After hooks

Tagging
 You can use tags to mark your scenarios
 Some tags are user for hooks
 There could be many tags for one scenario
 Effective execution of needed test scenarios

Tagging

Scenario vs. Scenario Outline
 Use different values instead of multiplying scenarios
 Allows to more concisely express the example through
the use of placeholders
 Scenario Outline steps provide a template which is
never directly run
 Problematic for some cucumber Reporting plug-ins in
Jenkins

Scenario vs. Scenario Outline

Advanced element usage
File Upload (steps and step definitions)

Advanced element usage
File Upload (function)

Advanced element usage
Looping through file links

Advanced features: iFrame, inFrame

Advanced features: iFrame, inFrame

Advanced features: JS Pop-ups
Alert, Confirm, Prompt

Continuous Integration with
Jenkins
 RVM plugin for executing tests in RVM env
 Cucumber-reports or Cucumber Test Result Plugin
for reporting
 Xvfb plugin for running tests headless
 Build With Parameters for manual execution using
different param

Continuous Integration with
Jenkins

Continuous Integration with
Jenkins

Questions? Ideas? Follow-up?
• Twitter @strazhnyk
• Skype ruslanstrazhnyk
• Email strazhnyk@gmail.com
• LinkedIn ruslanstrazhnyk