Functional Testing Swing Applications with Frankenstein

© ThoughtWorks, 2006

Functional Testing Swing Applications with Frankenstein

Vivek Prahlad


Agenda

• Introduction to Frankenstein:– What is it?– Origin– How does it work?– Features

• Demo


What is Frankenstein

• Record and Play tool for testing Swing Applications• Support for testing Multithreaded Applications• Ruby driver• Easy extension


Origins

• Originated on a ThoughtWorks project with a Swing UI

– Multithreaded user interface

– Custom components (date pickers, etc.)

• Functional testing tools (commercial and open source) inadequate

– Slow, inadequate support for testing multithreaded apps

– Poor custom component support

– Build integration

– License cost for commercial tools


Features

• Record and play support

• Performance

• Ruby driver

• OGNL based assertions

• Multithreaded application support

• Easy extension / customization

• Straightforward integration

• HTML Reports

– Records screenshot on test step failure

– Reports can be customized


How does it work?

• Recorders hook on to Swing Event Queue

• Attach component specific listeners

• Record Events when the user interacts with the UI

– Event coalescing attempts to minimize script size

• Events can replay themselves


Record and play support

• Recording for reproducing bugs

• Not advisable to record entire scenarios

– Scripts become unmaintainable, difficult to read

• A better way is to record snippets of a user's workflow

– Can extract functions, parameterize

• Later, library functions can be used to write tests from scratch


Ruby driver

• Helps make tests modular

– Extract common steps into functions

– Parameterize functions

• Build a vocabulary for your application

• Test Suite support


Why Ruby?

• Ruby is a full-featured object oriented language

• Focus on readability, ease of use

• Allows test scripts to be modularized

• Lots of flexibility:

– Connect to databases

– Externalize strings (for i18n testing)

– CSV support


Recording + Ruby

• In combination, it is possible to build a testing vocabulary very close to the domain.

• Example:

login username, password

check_balance_is 1100

transfer 100.to destination_account_number

check_balance_is 1000


Assertions

• Control-rightclick on text and labels records assertions

– Need to add additional assertions manually using the Ruby driver

• Assert arbitrary properties via OGNL:

– assert “table_name” , “tableModel.rowCount” , “1”

– Equivalent to:

– assertEquals (1 , table.getTableModel().getRowCount())

• Can even make method calls!

– assert “table_name” “getValueAt(0,0)” , “cell text at row 0, column 0”

• Check out Ruby driver for examples

• http://www.ognl.org for information about OGNL


Testing Multithreaded apps

Two basic approaches exist:

• Arbitrary waits

– Make a guess about when an action will complete

• Explicit synchronization

– Look for indirect indications that actions are complete


Abitrary waits

• Tests are either:

– Slow, if the delays are more than required

– Fragile, if the delays are less than required

• Example:


wait(20)

navigate inbox

select all

delete


Explicit Synchronization

• Tests tend to be verbose

• Example:


wait_for_label(username)

navigate inbox

select all

delete

• wait_for_label in turn uses a delay within a loop


FrankensteinApproach

• Scripts do not need to worry about threading issues

• The framework does it for you

– Decide on a worker thread naming convention

– Frankenstein will monitor threads in the system after each test step

• Example


navigate inbox

select all

delete


Integrating Frankenstein

• Logically name components ( using component.setName() )

– Naming strategy allows testing UIs where components aren't named

• Use PipingMain to get Frankenstein to launch your app

– Typical startup script: Java .. com.your.app.Main ..

– Change to:

– Java .. com.thoughtworks.frankenstein.application.PipingMain com.your.app.Main ..

• Use Ant's exec task to run Ruby test suite– Remember to launch app using PipingMain first!– May need delay before starting test run to account for app startup time <exec dir="${test.script.dir}" executable="ruby.exe"> <arg line="testsuite.rb"/> </exec>


Customizing Frankenstein

• Write a main class

/** * Launch the application under test via Frankenstein. */public class FrankensteinLauncher { public static void main(String[] args) { FrankensteinIntegration integration = new FrankensteinIntegration(YouMainClass.class); integration.registerEvent(YourCustomEvent.class); integration.registerRecorder(YourCustomRecorder.class); integration.start(args); }}



• Register custom events, if any

– Most events can extend AbstractFrankensteinEvent

– Use AbstractEventTestCase

• Register custom recorders, if any

– Most recorders can extend from AbstractComponentRecorder

– Recorders created using IOC, so declare which of these you'll need in your recorder's constructor:

• NamingStrategy, Recorder, ComponentDecoder, ComponentVisibility



Multithreading support:

• Decide on a worker thread naming convention, if required

– Use RegexWorkerThreadMonitor

– new FrankensteinIntegration(YourMain.class, new RegexWorkerThreadMonitor(“<thread name pattern>”);

• Or implement the WorkerThreadMonitor interface


Demo


Get it at

• https://svn.openqa.org/svn/frankenstein/trunk• Main site at http://www.openqa.org/frankenstein


Coming Soon

• Drag and Drop support

• Tree editor support

• Smart renderer decoders

– Pluggable renderer decoding support

• More assertions

Business

Functional Testing Swing Applications with Frankenstein