Rich GUI Testing: Swing and JavaFX

Rich GUI Testing Made Easy Functional Testing of Swing and JavaFX GUIs Yvonne Wang Price Guidewire Alex Ruiz Oracle tweet: @alexRuiz

Overall Presentation Goal Learn an easy, quick and natural way to write robust and compact tests for Java-based Rich GUIs: Swing and JavaFX

Agenda
Why testing GUIs is difficult?
Requirements for robust GUI testing
Writing testable GUIs
Top-3 must-have features in a GUI testing library
Introducing FEST, an open source library for GUI testing
Coding Demos
Troubleshooting GUI test failures
Conclusion

Why GUI testing is difficult?
Ideally, tests must be automated, but GUIs are designed for humans
Conventional unit testing is not suitable for testing GUIs: GUI components are usually composed of more than one class
The room for potential interactions with a GUI is huge
Conventional test coverage is not enough to cover all user interaction scenarios

Agenda
Coding Demos
Conclusion

Being able to simulate user input
Having a reliable mechanism for finding GUI components
Being able to tolerate changes in
Component position
Component size
Layout

Agenda
Coding Demos
Conclusion

Keep the UI layer as thin as possible
Use a unique name for GUI components
Do not test default component behavior
Concentrate on testing the expected behavior of your GUI

Agenda
Coding Demos
Conclusion

Intuitive API for test creation
Concise and easy-to-read API
Ability to aid developers troubleshoot test failures

Agenda
Coding Demos
Conclusion

Introducing FEST
Supports functional Swing and JavaFX GUI testing
Website: http://fest.easytesting.org
Its API provides a fluent interface
Supports component lookup by name, by type and by custom search criteria
Open Source project (Apache 2.0 license)
Supports both TestNG and JUnit
Simplifies troubleshooting GUI test failures

Agenda
Coding Demos
Conclusion

Our demo application: an RSS reader
Provides simple business logic
Its user interface includes:
Complex GUI components like JTree and JTable
Time-consuming tasks:
Database access
Retrieval of web feeds from the Internet
Drag ‘n drop

Agenda
Coding Demos
Conclusion

Failures may be due to:
Environmental conditions
A GUI component could not be found
More than one GUI component satisfied the given search criteria
Programming defect
Troubleshooting failures

Failure due to environmental conditions
Typical example: scheduled anti-virus software scan starts in the middle of our test session
A screenshot of the desktop at the moment of failure can help us determine if an environmental condition was responsible for the failure

Failure due to environmental conditions
FEST can automatically embed a screenshot of the desktop in a HTML test report (TestNG or JUnit)!

Configuration is easy, short and reuses existing infrastructure
<testng listeners="org...ScreenshotOnFailureListener"
outputDir="${target.test.results.dir}">
<classfileset dir="${target.test.classes.dir}"
includes="**/*Test.class" />
<classpath location="${target.test.classes.dir}" />
<classpath location="${target.classes.dir}" />
<classpath refid="test.classpath" />
</testng>

Failure due to GUI component not found
For example, looking for a button with name “ok” in a dialog that does not contain such button!
Having access to the current component hierarchy can help us figure out why a component could not be found
FEST includes the current component hierarchy when throwing a ComponentLookupException

Unable to find component using matcher org.fest.swing.core.NameMatcher[name='label', requireShowing=false].

Unable to find component using matcher org.fest.swing.core.NameMatcher[name='label', requireShowing=false].
Component hierarchy:
org.fest.test.MainWindow[name='frame0', title='BasicComponentFinderTest', enabled=true, visible=true, showing=true]
javax.swing.JRootPane[]
javax.swing.JPanel[name='null.glassPane']
javax.swing.JPanel[name='null.contentPane']
javax.swing.JButton[name='button', text='A Button', enabled=true, visible=true, showing=true]

Failure due to more than one GUI component satisfies a lookup condition
For example, looking up a button with name “ok” in a dialog
We have accidentally named two buttons with the same name!
Once again, FEST assists us by providing the list of found components in the thrown ComponentLookupException

Let’s image we have a JFrame with two JButtons
Our test tries to find a JButton by type and click it:
FrameFixture frame = new FrameFixture(new MyFrame());
frame.show();
frame.button().click();

Will throw the exception:
org.fest.swing.exception.ComponentLookupException: Found more than one component using matcher org.fest.swing.core.TypeMatcher[type=javax.swing.JButton, requireShowing=false].

Will throw the exception:
org.fest.swing.exception.ComponentLookupException: Found more than one component using matcher org.fest.swing.core.TypeMatcher[type=javax.swing.JButton, requireShowing=false].
Found:
javax.swing.JButton[name='first', text='First Button', enabled=true]
javax.swing.JButton[name='second', text='Second Button', enabled=true]

Agenda
Coding Demos
Conclusion

Wait! What about JavaFX?

JavaFX 2.0: Java APIs
Java APIs means:
TestNG/JUnit
Code coverage tools (Cobertura, Clover)
Code quality tools (FindBugs, Checkstyle)
Faster development of GUI functional testing tools

Roadmap
We will continue supporting Swing testing
Since Swing support is mature, we can focus on JavaFX testing
Release date? Unknown
Please remember: we work on our own spare time

Conclusion
GUI testing is necessary for improving the quality of our applications
For GUIs, functional testing is more suitable than unit testing
Successful testing strategy:
Create testable GUIs
Write robust GUI tests
Pick the right testing tool for your needs (e.g. FEST)
Happy testing!

Rich GUI Testing: Swing and JavaFX

by Alex Ruiz on Oct 05, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 974

Statistics

Rich GUI Testing: Swing and JavaFX — Presentation Transcript