I've been working on a Flex component and I'd like to write some automated tests for it. The trouble is, the UI testing tools I've looked at (FlexMonkey and Selenium Flex API) don't simulate "enough":
Most of the bugs which have come up so far relate to the way Flex deals with dragging and dropping, which these libraries can't simulate accurately enough. For example, I need to test a case where there is a "drop" event which occurs in the bottom half of a component – neither FlexMonkey nor Selenium Flex API can do that (they may simulate a mouse event, but they won't include coordinates).
So, is there any "good" way to automate that sort of testing?
Edit: After much research, it looks like the only piece of software that can do this is iMacros, which is Windows-only and the interface is... Lacking. So I'm going to be writing my own. Basically, it will put an HTTP interface on java.awt.Robot so code (in any language) can simulate mouse/keyboard events. If you're interested, PM me and I'll keep you updated.
Edit 2: I have published the first version of the framework I wrote, Blunderbuss, over at BitBucket: http://bitbucket.org/wolever/blunderbuss/ . You'll need Jython to run it (http://www.jython.org/), but after that the flex-client example should work.
Videos of Blunderbuss live over at Vimeo:
Automating Flex testing with Blunderbuss
Blunderbuss test suite running
At the moment this remains a proof-of-concept, as I haven't had the cycles to clean it up and make it more useable… But maybe enough people bothering me would give me that time :)
I've used Eggplant to test Flash and AIR apps without having to add any hooks into the code. It's a great tool but it's quite expensive. It simulates a real user by VNC-ing into a system and uses image recognition - among other things - to interact with the app.
I am definitely interested in your custom Java class, and (though I am not the best at Java (yet...)), I would be willing to help out if you're thinking of making this collaborative.
As to Flash MouseEvents. Unfortunately, there really isn't an accurate way to simulate the drag/drop experience in Flash. MouseEvents, when generated by the mouse, are handled in a very different way than regular events and while you could simulate actions by passing events into the handling functions, or by making the dispatcher fire a new DragEvent( DragEvent.DRAG_DROP..., it will not be the same as having the user interact with it. And for some functionality (like gaining access to the clipboard), nothing inside Flash will accomplish your goals.
To be honest, you're probably headed in the right direction -- using something which is not written in Flash to drive faked mouse events is probably your best bet.
I've never had to use it in Flex but i recently stumbled across some info on automation packages in the MS Surface SDK... after looking into it those classes automated user behavior which can be used for testing i.e. move a fake mouse to this point, perform this action. As you're using Flex mx.automation packages and classes. My guess (and hope) is that you'd be able to achieve what you want using these classes.
You could also try auto-hotkey - it is similarly a macro-editing program but it has proven to be very efficient and you can write scripts and set it up very easily.
Related
I'm trying to use to SketchUp API to navigate around 3D models (zoom, pan, rotate, etc). My ultimate aim is to integrate it with a Leap Motion app.
However, right now I think my first step would be to figure out how to control the basic navigation gestures via the Sketchup API. After a bit of research, I see that there are the 'Camera' and the 'Animation' interfaces, but I think they would be more suited to 'hardcoded' paths and motions within the script.
Therefore I was wondering - does anyone know how I can write a plugin that is able to accept inputs from another program (my eventual Leap Motion App in this case) and translate it into specific navigation commands using the Sketchup API (like pan, zoom, etc). Can this be done using the 'Camera' and the 'Animation' interfaces (in some sort of step increments), or are there other interfaces I should be looking at.
As usual, and examples would be most helpful.
Thanks!
View, Camera and the Animation class is what you are looking for. Maybe you don't even need the Animation class, you might just be ok with using the time in the UI class. Depends on the details of what you will be doing.
You can set the camera directly like so:
Sketchup.active_model.active_view.camera.set(ORIGIN, Z_AXIS, Y_AXIS)
or you can use View.camera= which also accept a transition time argument if you find that useful.
For bridging input you could always create a Ruby C Extension that takes care of the communication between the applications. There are some quirks in getting C Extensions work for SketchUp Ruby as oppose to regular Ruby though - depending on how you compile it.
I wrote a hello world example a couple of years ago: https://bitbucket.org/thomthom/sketchup-ruby-c-extension
Though note that I have since found a better solution for Windows, using the Development Kit from Ruby Installers: http://rubyinstaller.org/
This answer is related to my comment above regarding the view seemingly 'jumping' when I assign a new camera to the current view using camera=, but not if I use camera.set.
I figured out this was happening because the camera FOV for the original camera was different, and the new camera was defaulting to an FOV of 30. By explicitly creating the camera with the optional perspective and FOV arguments from the initial camera solves this problem:
new_camera = Sketchup::Camera.new new_eye, new_target, curr_camera.up, curr_camera.perspective?, curr_camera.fov
Hope people find this useful!
I've got the interesting task to build complex workflow tests for an existing web application which has never had unit or integration tests (all testing by developers / users without structure or guidelines).
Setup
The target is an ASP.NET (no MVC) web application, that has been build over several years. There is no clean MVC or any other pattern, so the HTML output is very bad (generated IDs, not much css classes, in line css styles
--> hard to test).
The application is data-centric, so there is a lot to test and the status of the database is very important for the tests.
I'm thinking of the following workflow:
1. Reset Database to test start data
2. Run Tests which create and test data by simulation user interactions
Tools
I was playing around with Selenium IDE, but it does not feel structured enough.
I'm dreaming of a toolset, where I can write tests in (literate) coffeescript / javascript, that can be executed in the browser (no need for headless testing), but all tools I can find aim to test javascript functions and not user interactions.
My test steps need to be:
page loads
test if page has loaded correctly by searching for text A or counting elements in ul B
click on button C, wait for popup D, type text in field E
click save button and check if text from field E is shown in element F
Is jasmine able to test these kind of user interactions? I can only find jasmine tests for javascript functions or the existance of HTML elements, but not for complex workflows with test steps that rely on each other.
Thanks in advance!
Selenium IDE is not the way to go for this.
Selenium is built on the WebDriver JSON Wire Protocol. Having this 'base' means it has been very easily plugged into many many different languages, all using the same kind of API.
One of them being JavaScript:
https://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/WebDriverJs
Disclaimer: the JS Bindings are very new!
I'm not sure I understand why you must do it in JavaScript, especially as I can see this severely limits your options.
I suggest IBM Rational Functional Tester. It's java based, making it very extensible. It's not Javascript, so be warned that test are written in java code. For most of it there's a recorder: you simply click around and it records your actions.
Regarding automated tests with it, here's my opinions .
It is a commercial product. I'm not affiliated with IBM but I work with RFT a lot.
You may want to look at RIATest for cross-platform cross-browser testing of web applications. It uses ECMAScript based script language which is very similar to JavaScript.
It works on Windows and Mac, supported browsers are Firefox, IE and Chrome. Automated testing scripts written on one platform/browser can be run against all other supported platforms/browsers.
It is certainly possible to automate the steps that you described. Dynamically generated IDs are not good but you should be able to use other properties (such as text, element type, etc.) to identify the HTML objects that you want to automate and test for.
(Disclaimer: I am a RIATest team member).
We have to write a ASP.NET site based on a workflow.
The client wants to see a graphical representation of the workflow. In addition (let's say it is a workflow for processing orders), the client wants to see at what point in the workflow any given order is, indicated on the graphical workflow representation by a highlighted node or some visual queue.
All of this must be available via a web interface.
Was hoping somebody had some bright ideas for how to achieve this without writing extensive custom controls.
Does Workflow Foundation 4 offer anything itself that would assist toward this end?
There are ways to use the WorkflowDesigner and issue the save image command through code but as it's a WPF control it needs to be hosted on a WPF form. I have tried to do this from a webpage but as the form isn't visible it has a size of 0. I didn't spend a lot of time in this so it might be possible.
See this for details on how to do so.
I am developing a flex application for collaborative data analysis. To present the data my application uses standard and custom components (grids, charts etc.).
I want to deliver the feature that allows users making notes over the GUI of my application. So, other users will see they notes late on.
At the moment my question is: How can be implemented mechanism that allows making notes over the GUI? All suggestions and examples are welcome?
There are a lot of ways to approach this. ( Check out Buzzword, MS Word, and Acrobat all for slightly different approaches of note taking on a document--I assume an application GUI could use any of the same approaches ).
I'd start by saying that the click event bubbles:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/flash/display/InteractiveObject.html#event:click
So, listen for the click event on every child of your main application file. When you receive that click event you can provide some business logic as to whether or not you want to add a comment /note on the component that was clicked. Then you just some "note" component for collecting and displaying the note data. You an position them based on the x, y values of the click event.
So, actually my problem is much easier then I expected (thank for great design of Flex).
I decided to utilize PopUpManager functionality for my task. It does everything I need at the moment.
I am working on a design spec for a new application that will be heavily workflow driven.
Before I re-invent the wheel, is there a decent lightweight workflow engine that plugs into ASP.NET already around?
Basically, I'm looking for something that handles moving through a defined set of workflow pages while handling state management automatically.
If this isn't around already, I'll definitely try to abstract the engine from my app and put it on codeplex, as it would be really handy.
Any suggestions?
Note: .NET 2.0, so no WWF, though I think WWF is overkill for my needs.
EDIT: Seems like there is a legitimate need for this, and there isn't a product out there...So I might build this.
Here is what I'm picturing:
Custom Page class called WebFlowPage
All WebFlowPage's are registered in a Workflow mapper.
Each WebFlowPage has some form of state object.
A HttpHandler handles picking the appropriate WebFlowPage based upon the workflow, and populating it from the state object.
Is the workflow dynamic, or static?
If the workflows are simple, you could roll your own workflow engine.
In certain situations, it can be fairly simple, and just a couple of data tables to handle the rules, processing and state.
Alot of workflow engines are built for large scale processing (credit card applications, for example). For small scale, you should at least consider your own, which would eliminate the overhead and dependency of/on an engine.
Not sure exactly what you wish to do here, but Ra-Ajax can easily keep state at least if you want your solution ajaxified...
For reference purposes you might want to check out the Ajax Calendar sample or even the (banalistically implemented) Ajax Wizard sample. It surely beats the hell out of doing it with JavaScript...
And every time you "do something" you're in "server-land" which means you can store temporaries all the time as you wish...
The project is LGPL
(PS!
Yes I do work with it)
Building a custom workflow engine is not trivial, although it may seem simple at first. We've tried that. It depends a lot on the complexity of the logic you need it to cover.
Given the current state of the Windows Workflow Foundation and the lack of another framework that abstracts the workflow concepts, I would choose WF if you need complex logic, asynchronous handling or branches in your workflows.
Tracking your state through the workflow can be accomplished by carrying some kind of xml payload or storing the state in a database,
If your workflow is actually a sequential set of forms that need to be filled in by the user, tracking the steps and guiding the user to the next step can be accomplished with some simple custom solution.
You could take a look at the InRule engine too.
Also, there is nxBRE.
These too are mostly used for business rules.
InRule is proprietary, whereas nxBRE supports RuleML (the defacto standard).
You might need to make your own implementation for the pages, and use the rule engine as the "structure".
At this moment, I know that Sharepoint 2007 supports page workflows (using WF), but this would imply using .NET Framework 3 and deployng sharepoint.
My suggestion would be to use whatever you find more light and easier to use.
I think the term "workflow" is very open to interpretation. I have been working lately with a type of workflow that is very different from what you seem to be describing. Mine is a state machine based workflow where the state of a particular record determines what actions a user can take to move the record to the next step in the business process. So "workflow" in this instance means how the record flows from one state to another until it is finally completed.
Your usage of workflow seems to have more to do with moving a user from one page to another in a linear multi-step process, which is a completely different use case (correct me if I'm wrong). So before coming up with a general purpose "workflow" engine that anyone could use, I would recommend defining a little bit better exactly what types of situations this system would handle.
I've been using this for a few months http://objectflow.codeplex.com. Not asp specific but it may fit your needs
While browsing the web for some workflow & BPM resources, I found the following project: NetBPM. Unfortunately, the project seems to be stopped.
I don't think there is a workflow engine that will automatically handle state for you, but if you are moving through a set of pages like a process such as checkout on an ecommerce site, perhaps the ASP.NET wizard control could help you?
There are few workflow options. "Aspose" and "Skelta" are the offers I´m evaluating.
Fábio
you can use WorkFlow Engine, just read the document and run the Demo.
all of the features you need for a dynamic workflow engine they added in there.