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

IRB Recipes

Yesterday we had an interesting Selenium Ruby session with Exist QA group. We were divided into 2 groups and my team was tasked to create IRB recipes for the following scenarios:

• enable auto-indenting
• enable auto-complete
• add a clear screen method (clear or cls)

Auto indenting

- enables user to write clean and properly indented codes.

IRB auto-indent configuration

1. From your console fire up your IRB

2. Notice that if you type ‘conf’ and check for the default value of

conf.auto_indent_mode = false

3. To override this, type

conf.auto_indent_mode = true (see line 2)

Auto complete

- enables user to check the available methods within an object by clicking DOUBLE TAB

IRB auto-complete configuration

1. From your console fire up your IRB

2. Type below command inside your IRB

require ‘irb/completion’

Clear Screen

- enables user clear the screen inside the IRB

IRB clear screen method

1. From your console fire up your IRB

2. Define a method to clear the system (see line 2-4)

3. Now you can call the method ‘cls’ inside IRB that will clear your screen