We've been using selenium with great success to handle high-level website testing (in addition to extensive python doctests at a module level). However now we're using extjs for a lot of pages and its proving difficult to incorporate Selenium tests for the complex components like grids.
Has anyone had success writing automated tests for extjs-based web pages? Lots of googling finds people with similar problems, but few answers. Thanks!
Can you provide more insight into the types of problems you're having with extjs testing?
One Selenium extension I find useful is waitForCondition. If your problem seems to be trouble with the Ajax events, you can use waitForCondition to wait for events to happen.
I have been testing my ExtJs web application with selenium. One of the biggest problem was selecting an item in the grid in order to do something with it.
For this, I wrote helper method (in SeleniumExtJsUtils class which is a collection of useful methods for easier interaction with ExtJs):
/**
* Javascript needed to execute in order to select row in the grid
*
* @param gridId Grid id
* @param rowIndex Index of the row to select
* @return Javascript to select row
*/
public static String selectGridRow(String gridId, int rowIndex) {
return "Ext.getCmp('" + gridId + "').getSelectionModel().selectRow(" + rowIndex + ", true)";
}
and when I needed to select a row, I'd just call:
selenium.runScript( SeleniumExtJsUtils.selectGridRow("<myGridId>", 5) );
For this to work I need to set my id on the grid and not let ExtJs generate it's own.
The biggest hurdle in testing ExtJS with Selenium is that ExtJS doesn't render standard HTML elements and the Selenium IDE will naively (and rightfully) generate commands targeted at elements that just act as decor -- superfluous elements that help ExtJS with the whole desktop-look-and-feel. Here are a few tips and tricks that I've gathered while writing automated Selenium test against an ExtJS app.
When generating Selenium test cases by recording user actions with Selenium IDE on Firefox, Selenium will base the recorded actions on the ids of the HTML elements. However, for most clickable elements, ExtJS uses generated ids like "ext-gen-345" which are likely to change on a subsequent visit to the same page, even if no code changes have been made. After recording user actions for a test, there needs to be a manual effort to go through all such actions that depend on generated ids and to replace them. There are two types of replacements that can be made:
CSS locators begin with "css=" and XPath locators begin with "//" (the "xpath=" prefix is optional). CSS locators are less verbose and are easier to read and should be preferred over XPath locators. However, there can be cases where XPath locators need to be used because a CSS locator simply can't cut it.
Some elements require more than simple mouse/keyboard interactions due to the complex rendering carried out by ExtJS. For example, a Ext.form.CombBox is not really a <select> element but a text input with a detached drop-down list that's somewhere at the bottom of the document tree. In order to properly simulate a ComboBox selection, it's possible to first simulate a click on the drop-down arrow and then to click on the list that appears. However, locating these elements through CSS or XPath locators can be cumbersome. An alternative is to locate the ComoBox component itself and call methods on it to simulate the selection:
var combo = Ext.getCmp('genderComboBox'); // returns the ComboBox components
combo.setValue('female'); // set the value
combo.fireEvent('select'); // because setValue() doesn't trigger the event
In Selenium the runScript command can be used to perform the above operation in a more concise form:
with (Ext.getCmp('genderComboBox')) { setValue('female'); fireEvent('select'); }
Selenium has "*AndWait" flavors for all commands for waiting for page loads when a user action results in page transitions or reloads. However, since AJAX fetches don't involve actual page loads, these commands can't be used for synchronization. The solution is to make use of visual clues like the presence/absence of an AJAX progress indicator or the appearance of rows in a grid, additional components, links etc. For example:
Command: waitForElementNotPresent
Target: css=div:contains('Loading...')
Sometimes an element will appear only after a certain amount of time, depending on how fast ExtJS renders components after a user action results in a view change. Instead of using arbitary delays with the pause command, the ideal method is to wait until the element of interest comes within our grasp. For example, to click on an item after waiting for it to appear:
Command: waitForElementPresent
Target: css=span:contains('Do the funky thing')
Command: click
Target: css=span:contains('Do the funky thing')
Relying on arbitrary pauses is not a good idea since timing differences that result from running the tests in different browsers or on different machines will make the test cases flaky.
Some elements can't be triggered by the click command. It's because the event listener is actually on the container, watching for mouse events on its child elements, that eventually bubble up to the parent. The tab control is one example. To click on the a tab, you have to simulate a mouseDown event at the tab label:
Command: mouseDownAt
Target: css=.x-tab-strip-text:contains('Options')
Value: 0,0
Form fields (Ext.form.* components) that have associated regular expressions or vtypes for validation will trigger validation with a certain delay (see the validationDelay property which is set to 250ms by default), after the user enters text or immediately when the field loses focus -- or blurs (see the validateOnDelay property). In order to trigger field validation after issuing the type Selenium command to enter some text inside a field, you have to do either of the following:
Triggering Delayed Validation
ExtJS fires off the validation delay timer when the field receives keyup events. To trigger this timer, simply issue a dummy keyup event (it doesn't matter which key you use as ExtJS ignores it), followed by a short pause that is longer than the validationDelay:
Command: keyUp
Target: someTextArea
Value: x
Command: pause
Target: 500
Triggering Immediate Validation
You can inject a blur event into the field to trigger immediate validation:
Command: runScript
Target: someComponent.nameTextField.fireEvent("blur")
Following validation, you can check for the presence or absence of an error field:
Command: verifyElementNotPresent
Target: //*[@id="nameTextField"]/../*[@class="x-form-invalid-msg" and not(contains(@style, "display: none"))]
Command: verifyElementPresent
Target: //*[@id="nameTextField"]/../*[@class="x-form-invalid-msg" and not(contains(@style, "display: none"))]
Note that the "display: none" check is necessary because once an error field is shown and then it needs to be hidden, ExtJS will simply hide error field instead of entirely removing it from the DOM tree.
Option 1
Command: click Target: css=button:contains('Save')
Selects the button by its caption
Option 2
Command: click Target: css=#save-options button
Selects the button by its id
Command: runScript
Target: with (Ext.getCmp('genderComboBox')) { setValue('female'); fireEvent('select'); }
First sets the value and then explicitly fires the select event in case there are observers.
I tried to use getEval/runScript to run Ext script but always got failed. Can some body give me a hand?
> command:runScript target:function
> helloExt() {
> return Ext.getCmp('eastPanel').id; }
>
> command:getEval target:
> this.browserbot.topWindow.helloExt();
Error requesting http://localhost:4444/selenium-server/driver/?cmd=getEval&1=this.browserbot.topWindow.helloExt()&sessionId=f511b076c17d499caba004e11ec7080a: ERROR: Threw an exception: 'Ext' is undefined
Useful tips for fetch grid via Id of grid on the page: I think you can extend more useful function from this API.
sub get_grid_row {
my ($browser, $grid, $row) = @_;
my $script = "var doc = this.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().document;\n" .
"var grid = doc.getElementById('$grid');\n" .
"var table = grid.getElementsByTagName('table');\n" .
"var result = '';\n" .
"var row = 0;\n" .
"for (var i = 0; i < table.length; i++) {\n" .
" if (table[i].className == 'x-grid3-row-table') {\n".
" row++;\n" .
" if (row == $row) {\n" .
" var cols_len = table[i].rows[0].cells.length;\n" .
" for (var j = 0; j < cols_len; j++) {\n" .
" var cell = table[i].rows[0].cells[j];\n" .
" if (result.length == 0) {\n" .
" result = getText(cell);\n" .
" } else { \n" .
" result += '|' + getText(cell);\n" .
" }\n" .
" }\n" .
" }\n" .
" }\n" .
"}\n" .
"result;\n";
my $result = $browser->get_eval($script);
my @res = split('\|', $result);
return @res;
}
To detect that element is visible you use clause not(contains(@style, "display: none")
it`s better to use this:
visible_clause = "not(ancestor::*[contains(@style,'display: none') or contains(@style, 'visibility: hidden') or contains(@class,'x-hide-display')])"
hidden_clause = "parent::*[contains(@style,'display: none') or contains(@style, 'visibility: hidden') or contains(@class,'x-hide-display')]"
This is a way to get the rowcount of a table (C#):
string rowcount = selenium.GetEval("this.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().document.getElementById('yourtable_id').querySelector('div[class=\"x-grid3-body\"]').childElementCount");
This only works with Google Chrome en Firefox (because of querySelector)
For complex UI that is not formal HTML, xPath is always something you can count on, but a little complex when it comes to different UI implementation using ExtJs.
You can use Firebug and Firexpath as firefox extensions to test an certain element's xpath, and simple pass full xpath as parameter to selenium.
For example in java code:
String fullXpath = "xpath=//div[@id='mainDiv']//div[contains(@class,'x-grid-row')]//table/tbody/tr[1]/td[1]//button"
selenium.click(fullXpath);
i also face the problem to locate extjs elements which ids are generated automaitcly.but when i used css expression,like this :Selenium.isElementPresent("css=span:contains('text1')"),the response is :can not support this attribute and method. i don't know what wrong is with my function. anyone can help me?thanks!!
http://www.getwindmill.com, I haven't tried it, but looks promising..