Widgets (registering custom elements with PageObject)

PageObject supports the easy creation of test widgets. These widgets are primarily used for interacting with Gwt or Gxt web applications.

For example, a Gxt table consists of multiple div elements, and each row is itself a table element containing a single row. To interact with the Gxt table, extend the PageObject::Element::Table class:

class GxtTable < PageObject::Elements::Table

  protected
  def child_xpath
    ".//descendant::tr"
  end
end

Then register the class with the PageObject gem. The register_widget method accepts a tag which will be used as the accessor, the class which will be added to the Elements module, and a html element tag which will be used as the top-level html element of the widget, or the html element used in the watir or selenium search.

PageObject.register_widget :gxt_table, GxtTable, :div

The GxtTable then behaves as if it were an html element for the purpose of page-object definitions.

class WidgetTestPageObject
  include PageObject

  gxt_table(:a_table, :id => "top_div_id")
  gxt_table :gxt_block_table do |element|
    "block_gxt_table"
  end

  div(:outer_div)
  gxt_table(:a_nested_gxt_table) {|page| page.outer_div_element.gxt_table_element}
end

PageObject does not provide a default method for elements defined in this way. Instead, it adds the "[tag]_element" method to return an object, and a "[tag]?" method to check for existence. In the example above "a_table_element" and "a_table?" would both be valid methods for WidgetTestPageObject, but "a_table" will not be found