Xebium

Two way translation

With use of the Xebium Format a script recorded in Selenium IDE is automatically translated into wiki syntax and can be pasted into FitNesse. And reverse: Wiki syntax can be copied back to Selenium IDE and can run as a selenium script. Very useful for debugging

Power of FitNesse

You can execute any custom build fixture code around the execution of the selenium test and use the default Setup and Teardown mechanism. This is great for bringing the system under test into the right state, setting up pre-conditions and cleaning up before running a test.

Improved maintainability

Because the tests are part of the FitNesse wiki you can create pages and test suites. These can be grouped in a tree structure, just like normal FitNesse tests. With FitNesse scenario table fixtures you can easily reduce duplication by making reusable components. Finally the documentation can be added right with the tests in the wiki. All this makes the tests much more maintainable.

Data driven testing

FitNesse's variable substitution makes tests less dependent on hard-coded values.
Use scenario tables to out-of-the-box create new methods enabling data-driven testing.

Reduced development costs

Xebium empowers you to use FitNesse without any development support, no coding is required to get you started.

Step 1: Checking out and installing FitNesse and the Xebium Project

• Prerequisites:

  Download the latest stable project version by simply pressing Free Download

  Alternatively the latest project version can be retrieved from Github allowing you to easily stay up-to-date, in order to do so Git is required

  For building the project Maven is required and needs to be setup

• Extract the downloaded zip file into a directory of choice

  Open the command-line terminal and navigate to this directory

• Alternatively use Git to clone the project from github by running the following command (from the command-line terminal):

  $ git clone git://github.com/xebia/Xebium

• Now build the project and start the Fitnesse server from the projects root folder with the following command (from the command-line terminal):

  $ mvn -Pfitnesse test

  Maven will retrieve all necessary dependencies into a Maven repository, the first time this might take a couple of minutes

• After these two steps the application should be successfully started, showing something like:

  FitNesse (v20121220) Started...
  [java]     port:              8000
  [java]     root page:         fitnesse.wiki.FileSystemPage at ./FitNesseRoot
  [java]     page version expiration set to 0 days.

  Leave the terminal window open to keep FitNesse running (control-c will shutdown the server)

  With this Step 1 is completed

Step 2: Setting up Firefox and Selenium IDE with the Xebium formatter

• Prerequisites:

Make sure Firefox is installed and contains the Selenium IDE plug-in.

• First we need to add the Selenium-Xebium-formatter to Firefox

  Open Firefox and go to the following location: selenium-xebium-formatter

  Choose the + Add to Firefox option

  When prompted with the Open with option select Firefox and press OK

  Restart Firefox

• To use the Xebium-formatter in Selenium IDE it first needs to be activated

  Open Selenium IDE in the Firefox Tools menu

  From the Selenium IDE menu choose Options -> Options...

  On the General tab check the "enable experimental features"
  and "disable format change warning messages" check-boxes

  Go to Options -> Format and select the xebium-formatter from the list.

  You are now finished with Step 2

  Continue to the Getting Started section to create your first Xebium test case

Create a Test in FitNesse

• To get started, we first need an idea of what we will test. Let's start with a test description.
• Open a browser to enter the Fitnesse Wiki url

  http://localhost:8000/

• If the installation steps have all been completed successfully you should now see the FitNesse wiki with the Xebium! logo.

Click the Xebium! logo to view the sample project.

• Enter the ExampleSuite by clicking the link to start your testing experience.

  The ExampleSuite contains several examples on how to use the Xebium! fixture

• Now you are ready to create your own first test.

  In the Add menu, press Test Page to create a new page.

  The new page name should get a name written in CamelCase.

  In the content section of the page we can add a basic structure describing what our test is supposed to do:

  | Given a browser on google.com |
  | when a query is done for Xebium |
  | then search results should be found |

  This is a quite basic example.

• Now we have our test description. Let's hook it up to Xebium!

Recording a Selenium IDE Script

• Open a new Firefox tab or window and start the Selenium IDE plug-in:

  In the Firefox menu select Tools>Selenium IDE.

• Selenium IDE opens with the record function already activate. If not push the Record button to start recording.
• Perform the steps we outlined in the FitNesse test:
  1. Surf to www.google.com.
  2. Enter the search term "Xebium" in the search field.
  3. Press the magnifying glass symbol (with your mouse, do not use the enter key at this point).
  4. On the Google search result page verify the Xebium link is being displayed.

  The latter is done by right clicking your mouse on the link and selecting the waitForText link=Xebium Xebium option from the bottom of the menu.

  The right mouse button allows you to add additional verifications to the script that is being recorded. In addition to this countless commands and checks can be added manually in the Selenium IDE (Use the Command dropdown to see all possible options).

• Now you have a first simple Selenium script.

  Run the script from the Selenium IDE in order to verify that it correctly works.

  If the test succeeds go to the Source tab.

  If all is right the script looks something like this:

  | script | selenium driver fixture |
  | start browser | firefox | on url | http://www.google.com/ |
  | ensure | do | open | on | / |
  | ensure | do | type | on | name=q| with | Xebium |
  | ensure | do | click | on | name=btnG |
  | ensure | do | waitForElementPresent | on | link=Xebium - Selenium from FitNesse |
  | stop browser |

• In the next step we will use parts to the recorded actions to fill in the test script.

Connect it all together

• At this point we have a test page in FitNesse and a test recorded according to the steps we described in the FitNesse test.
• Let's start with adding a scenario that describes the first test step. Go to the FitNesse page and edit it.

  Before the script steps we add a scenario table describing the first step:

  !| scenario | Given a browser on google.com |
  | start browser | firefox | on url | http://www.google.com/ |
  | ensure | do | open | on | / |

• The second scenario when a query is done for Xebium will look like this:

  !| scenario | when a query is done for Xebium |
  | ensure | do | type | on | id=lst-ib | with | Xebium |
  | ensure | do | click | on | name=btnG |

• Finally the Then step can be describes as:

  !| scenario | then search results should be found |
  | ensure | do | waitForText | on | link=Xebium | with | Xebium |
  | stop browser |

• Now all the technical steps are implemented. Let's make sure our script is using the right fixture:

  | script | selenium driver fixture |
  | Given a browser on google.com |
  | when a query is done for Xebium |
  | then search results should be found |
              

• Let's run the test: press the Test button and observe the result.
• We can use a collapsed section in FitNesse to hide the technical details, so our page remains clean and readable. The final test page looks like this:

  !*> Step implementations
  !| scenario | Given a browser on google.com |
  | start browser | firefox | on url | http://www.google.com/ |
  | ensure | do | open | on | / |
  
  !| scenario | when a query is done for Xebium |
  | ensure | do | type | on | name=q | with | Xebium |
  | ensure | do | click | on | name=btnG |
  
  !| scenario | then search results should be found |
  | ensure | do | waitForElementPresent | on | link=Xebium - Selenium from FitNesse |
  | stop browser |
  *!
  
  | script | selenium driver fixture |
  | Given a browser on google.com |
  | when a query is done for Xebium |
  | then search results should be found |
              

• We made a small shortcuts here: normally you want to open a browser and execute a whole set of tests before shutting down the browser.

Further reading

There is a Xebium support group on Google Xebium User Forum

You can find out more about Xebium on the Xebia blog site

1. Introduction to Xebium
2. Get your webtests in FitNesse with Xebium

Find out how to correctly setup your environment to run against IE, Chrome and Safari Setting Up IE, Chrome and Safari drivers

Xebium is a powerful instrument, but please don't take test automation lightly! The following blog by Gojko Adzic might give you some helpful guidelines: UI Testing Explained

Authors

Xebium is written by a group of passionate java developers from Xebia in the Xebia App incubator project

Screencast

A screencast will come soon...