Watir Tutorial: Installation and Setup - Part I

Watir installation and setup - Part I

Installing watir is just two step process

• Step #1 - Install Ruby


• Step #2 - Install Watir

Step #1 - Installing Ruby

Download ruby binaries or installers.

Installing Ruby on Windows

You might have Ruby already installed. It is always good idea to check whether Ruby is already installed in your machine and the version of Ruby if it is available. Execite the following commond from your windows command prompt.

C:\Documents and Settings\Shrikant Wagh>ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
 

If it is not installed you will get the following message

C:\Documents and Settings\Shrikant Wagh>ruby -v
'ruby' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Easiest way to install Ruby on Windows platforms is to use one-click installer. Click on this link to download the one-click installer
Ruby 1.8.6 One-Click Installer

Run the one-click installer and follow the instruction to install Ruby.

After installation is complete, verify your Ruby installtion using the same commant mentioed above.

If you want to explore other option to install Ruby, please visit http://ruby-lang.org/en/downloads.

Installing Ruby On Linux

For most of the Linux flavors, compiled packages/binaries are available to install Ruby.

Red Hat and Fedora Linux

Verify whether Ruby is already installed.

rpm -q ruby
package ruby is not installed 

If it is not yet instyalled then you can install it using yum update manager. Any installtion tasks requires root access, so you can login with root access or use sudo

sudo yum install ruby

Follow the instructions prompted by installer to install required packages.

Verify your Ruby installtion once complete.

ruby -v
ruby 1.8.1 (2003-12-25) [i386-linux-gnu]

Debian or Ubuntu Linux

Verify whether Ruby is already installed.

ruby
The program 'ruby' is currently not installed.
You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install ruby
-bash: ruby: command not found

If it is not yet instyalled then you can install it using app-get. Any installtion tasks requires root access, so you can login with root access or use sudo

sudo apt-get install ruby

Follow the instructions prompted by installer to install required packages.

Verify your Ruby installtion once complete.

ruby -v
ruby 1.8.1 (2003-12-25) [i386-linux-gnu]

Installing Ruby On OS X

Your Mac might have Ruby already installed, verify which version on Ruby is installed on your Mac.

ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [universal-darwin9.0]

You got the right version. Do nothing. If you got older versiona dn want to installt new version then you can use MacPorts or Fink

On MacPorts, you can install Ruby with…

% port install ruby

Also, you can doenload the source code and compile it locally.

For source code and more details of installting Ruby on OS X, refer to Ruby source code" for source, Ruby for Leopard for building Ruby on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Ruby for Tiger for builing Ruby on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

Watir Tutorial - How to check for web component rendering

For any web page testing, almost very test engineer has the dilemma of how much wait is optimal for the page/certain component to render. How much time will it take to render the component before you can check that components or the enclosed in the components depends on so may parameters and your guess is as good as mine. If you wait for less, you get to many false failures. If you wait more, you test execution get sluggish.
You can always use this trick, few lines if extra code, but make you test execution much efficient - sleep for small duration, check for component in a loop and break out soon it is available.
Here is the test automation scenario. You have a web page with the form and you have to automate filling the form fields and form submission. So if you try to check for components using assert() or try to edit the form fields before the form is rendered on the page, you test will fail just because the page took longer to load. If you take the worst case scenario and put 30 sec of wait time, it will be annoying for person who will execute those test cases, as he/she have to wait for that duration everytime.
Following approach will address this issue, just use any looping structure you are comfortable with, sleep for small duration and check if the form is rendered, break out of the loop soon form is available and continue with rest of the test case.
Sample Code:
tries = 0
until ($browser.form(:id, "service-form").exists? or tries > 5)
sleep 2
$browser.logger.info( "waiting...")
tries = tries + 1
end