Cucumber: Read from File

As your automated testing mature, you don’t want to limit users hard coding their application under test or browser driver all in the ENVironment file(env.rb). You can customized your environment by creating a configuration file where you can define variables like applications URL, timeout, database configurations and the like.

From the basic folder structure discussed in Automated Testing with Cucumber + Capybara post, add two more files:

config > environments.yml

support > custom_config.rb

where:

environments.yml – contains all the environment variables that you can use

google:
 app_host: http://www.google.com

bing:
 app_host: http://www.bing.com

custom_config.rb - ruby code where you configure your code to read from a specific file

require "erb"

module CustomConfig
 unless defined? @@env_config
 puts "loading environments.yml..."
 env = (ENV['ENVIRONMENT'] && ENV['ENVIRONMENT'].to_sym) || :google
 environments = YAML.load(ERB.new(File.read(File.expand_path('../../../config/environments.yml', __FILE__))).result)
 @@env_config = environments[env.to_s]
 raise "No config found for environment: #{env}" unless @@env_config
 end

def env_config
 @@env_config
 end

end

World(CustomConfig)

Your base folder should look like these by now:

Revised Base Folder

Then edit your env.rb by adding the following lines to your environment file.

require File.expand_path(‘../custom_config’, __FILE__)
include CustomConfig

Also update Capybara.app_host definition to look up to @@env_config. Your env.rb file should be edited to something like this:

env.rb

require 'capybara'
require 'capybara/cucumber'
require File.expand_path('../custom_config', __FILE__)
include CustomConfig

Capybara.default_driver = :selenium
Capybara.app_host = env_config['app_host']
Capybara.default_wait_time = 20

World(Capybara)

Notice in line #07 of your env.rb you are basically pointing app host to whatever environment you set in your custom_config.rb – env variable, (see line #06) for this example :google

From here on you should still be able to run your simple_search.feature file without error, the only difference is your code reads now from a specific file – environments.yml, through custom_config.rb.

Automated Testing with Cucumber + Capybara

In this post we will introduce another gem called Capybara.

Capybara is an acceptance testing framework with a higher level API and support for multiple backends, supports Selenium and runs in different browsers.

Others may ask, “Why would I use capybara if selenium could also drive the browser the way I want it?”  Well, one advantage I appreciate is Capybara’s higher-level API compared to selenium.

Let’s take for example a simple scenario of typing strings to an input textbox:

Selenium-webdriver snippet

require 'selenium-webdriver'

element = driver.find_element :name => "q"
element.send_keys "Cucumber tests"

Capybara snippet

require 'capybara'

fill_in "q", "Cucumber tests"

You can obviously see from this example that Capybara enforces easier writing scripts ability. For a complete documentation on Capybara you can check this link from Github which I found very helpful.

After installation setup discussed in my previous post Introduction to Cucumber, you need to have the following folder structure and files:

I. Base Folder

Base Folder Structure

where:

features – folder to host all your feature files

step_definitions – folder to host all your step definition Ruby files

support – folder to host your configuration files (env.rb)

Gemfile – defines the top-level gems to be used in your project

II. Features

- describes the features that a user will be able to use in the program

Sample: simple_search.feature

Feature: As a user I should be able to perform simple google search

Scenario: A simple google search scenario
 Given I am on the main google search
 When I fill in "q" with "Cucumber test"
 And I click "gbqfb" button
 And I click on the first result
 Then I should see "Cucumber lets software development teams describe how software should behave in plain text."

III. Step Definition

- describes the actions that user will do for each step.

Sample: search_step.rb

Given /^I am on the main google search$/ do
 visit ('/')
end

When /^(?:|I )fill in "([^"]*)" with "([^"]*)"$/ do |field, value|
 fill_in(field, :with => value)
end

Then /^I click "([^"]*)" button$/ do |button|
 click_button(button)
end

Then /^I click on the first result$/ do
 find(:xpath, "//html/body/div[3]/div[2]/div/div[5]/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[2]/div/ol/li/div/h3/a").click
end

Then /^I should see "([^"]*)"$/ do |text|
 page.should have_content(text)
end

IV. Support

- hosts all configuration files

Sample: env.rb

require 'capybara'
require 'capybara/cucumber'

Capybara.default_driver = :selenium
Capybara.app_host = "http://www.google.com"
Capybara.default_wait_time = 20

World(Capybara)

V. Gemfile

- a format for describing gem dependencies required to execute Ruby codes

Sample: Gemfile

source "http://rubygems.org"

group(:test) do
 gem 'cucumber'
 gem 'capybara'
 gem 'rspec'
end

VI. Run

Using terminal go to your root project folder and type: cucumber or bundle exec cucumber

After the run, you should be able to see the results like this:

1 scenario (1 passed)
5 steps (5 passed)
0m9.461s

This example runs smoothly in Windows 7. Let me know if it works for you as well.

Useful RubyMine Keyboard Shortcuts

Meet my new colleague, Jetbrains RubyMine “The Most Intelligent Ruby on Rail IDE” sounds big huh! Since he will be my new companion / buddy for the next months to come, I decided to know him better and build a good rapport.

Here are some of the keyboard shortcuts I find to be friendly and useful:

Shortcut	Description
Ctrl+Alt+S	Go to Settings
Ctrl+N	Open a class
Ctrl+Shift+N	Open a file
Ctrl+B	Go to declaration
Ctrl+Space	Code completion
Ctrl+E	Show recent files
Ctrl+K	Commit changes
Ctrl+G	Go to line
Ctrl+T	Update project
Alt+Left/Right	Navigate through the editor tabs
Ctrl+Slash	Make a block comment
Ctrl+F	Find from current file
Ctrl+Shift+F	Find from current folder

Error installing Nokogiri in Ubuntu 10.10

Following Nokogiri Installation for Ubuntu I run below #nokogiri requirement in my terminal:

sudo apt-get install libxslt-dev libxml2-dev
sudo gem install nokogiri

Running “sudo gem install nokogiri” displays the following error:

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
 ERROR:  Error installing nokogiri:
 ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
/usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb
 extconf.rb:5:in `require': no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError)
 from extconf.rb:5
Gem files will remain installed in /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.3.1 for inspection.
 Results logged to /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.3.1/ext/nokogiri/gem_make.out

Was able to resolve the issue by installing ruby1.8-dev and reinstalling the nokogiri gem:

sudo apt-get install ruby1.8-dev 
sudo gem install nokogiri 

exist@exist:~$ sudo gem install nokogiri
 Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
 Successfully installed nokogiri-1.4.4
 1 gem installed
 Installing ri documentation for nokogiri-1.4.4...

Selenium-Ruby Installations in Linux

In relation to my previous post on Selenium and Ruby setup in Windows, here’s an installation guide for Linux peeps:

1. Install JRE

- In your terminal type: sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre

- To verify type: java -version

Note: Java version should be 1.5 or higher versions

2. Install Ruby

- In your terminal, type: sudo apt-get install ruby

- To verify type: ruby –version

Note: ruby 1.8.7 works with rspec version <= 1.3.1

3. Install Rubygems

- From the terminal, type: sudo apt-get install rubygems OR you can follow this tutorial Installing RubyGems

- To verify type:  gem –version

4. Install other useful gems

• Rake ( to create a task that runs set of tests )

- Type: sudo gem install rake

- To verify type:  rake –version

• Selenium-client ( API to drive Selenium tests from Ruby )

- Type: sudo gem install selenium-client -v 1.2.18

- To verify type: gem list selenium-client

Note: selenium-client 1.2.18 works with rspec version 1.2.8

• Rspec ( to define executable examples of the expected behaviour of your code )

- Type: sudo gem install rspec -v 1.2.8

- To verify type: spec –version

• Faker ( to easily generate fake data: names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. )

- Type: sudo gem install faker

- To verify type: gem list faker

Selenium and Ruby setup in Windows

Newbie in Ruby? Never heard Selenium? Had a reformat?
No sweat! Here’s a list of requirements to set up Selenium and Ruby in your Windows machine.

SELENIUM Remote-Control (RC )

–> is a test tool that allows you to write automated web application UI tests in any programming language against any HTTP website using any mainstream JavaScript-enabled browser.

• get it here

• extract the file anywhere in you local machine

JAVA

–> Requirement to run the selenium server, should be 1.5 or later version

• get it here

• install Java and configure your PATH environment variable correctly.

• from the console, you can verify the installation by typing:  java -version

SELENIUM RC RUBY CLIENT DRIVER

• requires Ruby

• recommended way to install: Ruby 1.8.6 One-Click Installer

• upgrade to latest version by getting the latest binary files of Ruby 1.8.7

Rubygems

• get the latest rubygem distribution as tgz or zip from here

• extract the archive to your desired directory

• 2 ways to install ruby:

from the console, go to the extracted directory then type:  ruby setup.rb

from your explorer, go to the extracted directory and double click setup.rb file

• install the ruby client driver as a rubygem by typing:  gem install <ruby gem>

gem install selenium-client

• install other gems that will be useful in your testing:

gem install rspec -v=1.2.6

gem install syntax

gem install faker

BDoc documentation

–> guide for all your rubygems documentations

• from the console type: gem install aptinio-bdoc

• then save the doc to your local, from the console  type:  bdoc //[path]

To get scripts or file from a repository through Git

1. from the console, install github, bash or gui OpenInGitGui-2.0.zip
2. generate an SSH rsa, type: $ ssh-keygen -t rsa
3. copy the generated id_rsa pub
4. paste it on the personal settings of ur public_key
5. then clone

Get all hyperlinks within a page using Nokogiri

Task: Create a selenium script using Ruby that will collect all the available links within a page.

In essence we will try to create a method that will parse the html source of the current page and get all the elements with css(‘a’) or xpath ‘//a’ which indicates an anchor element. First let’s try to do it in IRB.

Steps:

1. Start your server and fire up your irb

2. In your console, type

require 'nokogiri'

3. Initialize the page we want to test, say we want to get all the hyperlinks within a google home page.

page = "http://www.google.com.ph"

4. Type the following commands

doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open(page))
links = doc.css('a')
hrefs = links.map {|link| link.attribute('href').to_s}.uniq.sort.delete_if
{|href| href.empty?}

Of course we would not like to do the procedure every time in our console, thus we could save it as a method in our class like the following:

# method that will get all links using Nokogiri
 def get_all_hrefs_nokogiri
   page = self.get_location()
   doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open(page))
   links = doc.css('a')

   hrefs = links.map {|link| link.attribute('href').to_s}.uniq.sort.delete_if {|href| href.empty?}
   return hrefs
 end

# get all links without using Nokogiri
 def get_all_hrefs
   hrefs = []
   self.get_xpath_count('//a').to_i.times do |i|
     if self.is_element_present("document.links[#{i}]") {hrefs << self.get_attribute("document.links[#{i}]@href")}
     end
     return hrefs
   end
 end

Convert XML to CSV with Nokogiri Ruby gem

Once upon a time, in an exciting world of software testing… Exist QA team had been using Testlink 1.8.3 as an open-source tool for test management. They were happy and it serves them well not until their client request for a copy of the testcases with complete details in EXCEL format. Doomed! Testlink only offers generation of test specification in HTML, OpenOffice Writer and MS Word but unfortunately not in EXCEL.

But just like a princess with a prince charming… then came Nokogiri(saw in Japanese) gem from Ruby which is an HTML, XML, SAX  and Reader parser. It supports document searching via XPATH and CSS3 Selectors. Not to mention FasterCSV also a Ruby gem which provides a complete interface to CSV files and data.  It offers tools to enable you to read and write to and from Strings or IO objects, as needed.

First they install these precious gems in their Windows machine by executing the following commands:

gem install nokogiri
gem install fastercsv

With these tools Exist QA carefully plans a plot to solve their problem. Since Testlink has the ability to export testsuite together with its testcases in XML format, they use this advantage to pass it as an input file in their Testlink parser code in Ruby. Here’s their gameplan:

require 'rubygems'
require 'nokogiri'
require 'fastercsv'

FIELDS = %w{Testsuite ID Name Summary Steps Expected_Result }

def new_testcase(csv, suite, id, name, summary, steps, expectedresult)

  testcases = []
  testcases << suite
  testcases << "GPC - #{id}"
  testcases << name
  testcases << summary
  testcases << steps
  testcases << expectedresult

  csv << FasterCSV::Row.new(FIELDS, testcases)
end  

csv = FasterCSV.open(ARGV[1],"w")
csv << FIELDS

doc = Nokogiri::XML(open(ARGV[0]))

doc.xpath('//testsuite').each do |tsuite|
  puts "#{tsuite.attribute('name')}\n"

  doc.xpath('//testcase').each do |tcase|
    new_testcase(csv, tsuite.attribute('name'), tcase.css('externalid').inner_text,
      tcase.attribute('name'), tcase.css('summary').inner_text,
      tcase.css('steps').inner_text, tsuite.css('expectedresults').inner_text)
  end
end

All they need to do is run the program in their console following this format:

ruby <filename> “<input>” “<output>”

Where filename is the name of the Testlink parser code; input is the xml filename(generated XML file from Testlink) and output is the csv filename(file where the parsed xml data will be saved).

ruby tlparser.rb “test.xml” “test.csv”

Nokogiri and FasterCSV saves the day! Now they can provide the testcase report in no time, every time their client request for it. And Exist QA lives happily ever after…

Multi select comment in Ruby

Here are some ways to do multi-select comments in your Ruby code:

1. =begin/ =end block

Note:

All codes between the =begin/=end block is treated as comments

=begin/=end block should NOT be indented

2. ctrl + shift + c

To do this, highlight the block that you want to comment out, then click ctrl + shift + c

Using .irbrc file to configure your IRB

In my latest post “IRB Recipes” where we’ve discussed how to configure IRB to enable auto-complete, auto-indent and to clear screen, notice that when you exit your IRB the configurations return to its default value. And it not so DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) to type the recipes every time you fire up your IRB.

This prob leads us to using an .irbrc file to permanently configure your IRB every time you use it. Here’s how I set up my initial .irbrc file:

1. Create .irbrc or _irbrc file in wherever directory/location you want (In my case I saved it in C:\Documents and Settings\user)

Note: Creating a file in notepad/wordpad having “.” before the filename will not allow you to do so, I suggest you use Notepad++ source code editor

2. Edit your .irbrc file

.irbrc file

Let’s dissect the .irbrc file configuration:

Line 1:  Enables auto-completion

Line 2:  Enables pretty print

Line 3:  Enables auto-indention

Line 4:  Enables the use of readline

Line 6-8:  Enables clear screen inside IRB

Line 9:  Validates if that .irbrc file was loaded successfully

3. Check if the your .irbrc file is successfully loaded

• Run console
• Go to the directory where you saved your .irbrc file
• Fire up IRB
• Manually check auto-indention, auto-completion and clear screen method (in my case I validated it with a “Yes! Configuration is loaded!” message)

4. To effect the .irbrc configuration in other directory other than its current location

• Create a HOME environment variable name
• Set variable value to the current location of the .irbrc file
• Reboot to effect changes in the environment variable

5. Verify .irbrc file by going through step # 3 but this time go to other directory and not on the location of your .irbrc file