Wx-Nobbie – An implementation of the Nobbie GUI Driving API for WxRuby2¶ ↑

Nobbie is a simple generic api for driving GUI’s (both web and rich-client interfaces). This particular implementation is for driving WxRuby2 applications. There are other implementations available for driving Java Swing and Web Applications - but they all use the same generic API.

Nobbie attempts to make the driving of UI’s as simple as possible. Whereas most UI drivers tend to give you multiple ways to find components and subsequently multiple ways to interact with them, Nobbie’s philosophy is:

• finding components by name is the simplest, least brittle approach.

• most UI interactions boil down to: typing, choosing and clicking

(Note: if you can’t sleep without the ability to find things using xpath or whatever, there are hooks to specify your own component finding strategies).

With this in mind, Nobbie provides a simple method of finding components (using ElementPathBuilder) and a simple set of Operations to perform on them.

A quick overview with examples:

• Paths …

  In order to perform operations on a component, you need to first find it. Only very simple ‘named’ paths are supported by default (but you can implement your own by providing an object that responds to ‘find_component’). When specifying a path, if you do not provide an object that responds to ‘find_component’, Nobbie will attempt to coerce the path into the default path type: Nobbie::Wx::ElementPathBuilder.

  That may sound complicated but its really just sugar. The following paths will all find the component named ‘text_ctrl’:

  'text_ctrl'
  :in => 'text_ctrl'
  in_('text_ctrl')
  Nobbie::Wx::ElementPathBuilder.new('text_ctrl')
  :text_ctrl
  

• Typing …

  type(value, path)
  

  e.g.

  type('fred', in_('first_name'))
  

  …or if you’re one of those DSL/anglification people

  type 'fred', :in => 'first_name'
  type 'fred', 'first_name'
  type 'fred', :first_name
  

  This will find the component named ‘first_name’ and type ‘fred’ into it. …this works for anything you can type into.

• Selecting …

  select value, path
  

  e.g.

  select 'Mr', in_('title')
  

  …or

  select 'Mr', :in => 'title'
  select 'Mr', 'title'
  select 'Mr', :title
  

  This will find the component named ‘title’ and select ‘Mr’. …this works for anything where you can make a selection from a number of options (which is quite a lot of things).

  You can get the value of the current selection using:

  selected_value path
  

• Clicking …

  click(path) (for buttons you can also use the label instead of a path)

  e.g.

  click('save')
  

  …or

  click 'save'
  click :save
  etc
  

  This will find the component named (or labelled) ‘save’ and click it. …this works for anything you can click.

• Choosing …

  choose path
  

  e.g.

  choose in_('female')
  

  …or

  choose :in => 'female'
  choose 'female'
  choose :female
  

  This will find the component named ‘female’ and choose it …this works for anything that has a chosen/non-chosen state.

  You can determine if a component is currently chosen using:

  chosen? path
  

Hopefully that makes some degree of sense, there are a few other operations available, that should be self explanatory from the documentation.

• Writing that first test …

  Nobbie can drive a Wx application from Cucumber or test/unit. However, due to a Wx limitation its not possible to launch a new instance of your application for every test run (this would also be very slow anyway). So, instead Nobbie will launch your application, run all the tests in your suite and then close down the application. (Note: If anyone has a better solution to this … please let us know).

  In order for this to happen, you must advise Nobbie which application you wish to test by setting the constant APPLICATION_UNDER_TEST to an instance of your application, i.e.:

  require 'rubygems'
  require_gem 'nobbie-wx-preview'
  
  require 'your_application'
  require 'your_test_suite'
  
  APPLICATION_UNDER_TEST = YourApp.new
  

  Finally, to prevent your application being loaded when its file is ‘required’, edit your application startup as follows:

  YourApp.new.main_loop  if __FILE__ == $0
  

• More examples …

  Nobbie’s features are described by a set of Cucumber features which are installed as part of the gem. Take a look at the ‘features’ directory. There’s also a Test::Unit suite to be found in the ‘test’ directory.