Making Watir and Cucumber an efficient tool for Web UI Automation is an overview and comparison between modern Test Automation Frameworks for WebUI

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

2. 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

3. So many Frameworks?!

4. 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

5. Experience with RF

6. Robot Framework

7. Robot Framework

8. 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

9. Behave

10. Behave

11. 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

12. JavaScript Frameworks

13. JavaScript Frameworks

14. JavaScript Frameworks

15. 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

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

17. 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

18. 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

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

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

21. 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

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

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

24. Hooks
Before and After hooks

25. 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

26. Tagging

27. 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

28. Scenario vs. Scenario Outline

29. Advanced element usage
File Upload (steps and step definitions)

30. Advanced element usage
File Upload (function)

31. Advanced element usage
Looping through file links

32. Advanced features: iFrame, inFrame

33. Advanced features: iFrame, inFrame

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

35. 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

36. Continuous Integration with
Jenkins

37. Continuous Integration with
Jenkins

38. Questions? Ideas? Follow-up?
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