Any suggestions for testing extjs code in a browser, preferably with selenium?
Solution 1
The biggest hurdle in testing ExtJS with Selenium is that ExtJS doesn't render standard HTML elements and the Selenium IDE will naively (and rightfully) generate commands targeted at elements that just act as decor -- superfluous elements that help ExtJS with the whole desktop-look-and-feel. Here are a few tips and tricks that I've gathered while writing automated Selenium test against an ExtJS app.
General Tips
Locating Elements
When generating Selenium test cases by recording user actions with Selenium IDE on Firefox, Selenium will base the recorded actions on the ids of the HTML elements. However, for most clickable elements, ExtJS uses generated ids like "ext-gen-345" which are likely to change on a subsequent visit to the same page, even if no code changes have been made. After recording user actions for a test, there needs to be a manual effort to go through all such actions that depend on generated ids and to replace them. There are two types of replacements that can be made:
Replacing an Id Locator with a CSS or XPath Locator
CSS locators begin with "css=" and XPath locators begin with "//" (the "xpath=" prefix is optional). CSS locators are less verbose and are easier to read and should be preferred over XPath locators. However, there can be cases where XPath locators need to be used because a CSS locator simply can't cut it.
Executing JavaScript
Some elements require more than simple mouse/keyboard interactions due to the complex rendering carried out by ExtJS. For example, a Ext.form.CombBox is not really a <select>
element but a text input with a detached drop-down list that's somewhere at the bottom of the document tree. In order to properly simulate a ComboBox selection, it's possible to first simulate a click on the drop-down arrow and then to click on the list that appears. However, locating these elements through CSS or XPath locators can be cumbersome. An alternative is to locate the ComoBox component itself and call methods on it to simulate the selection:
var combo = Ext.getCmp('genderComboBox'); // returns the ComboBox components
combo.setValue('female'); // set the value
combo.fireEvent('select'); // because setValue() doesn't trigger the event
In Selenium the runScript
command can be used to perform the above operation in a more concise form:
with (Ext.getCmp('genderComboBox')) { setValue('female'); fireEvent('select'); }
Coping with AJAX and Slow Rendering
Selenium has "*AndWait" flavors for all commands for waiting for page loads when a user action results in page transitions or reloads. However, since AJAX fetches don't involve actual page loads, these commands can't be used for synchronization. The solution is to make use of visual clues like the presence/absence of an AJAX progress indicator or the appearance of rows in a grid, additional components, links etc. For example:
Command: waitForElementNotPresent
Target: css=div:contains('Loading...')
Sometimes an element will appear only after a certain amount of time, depending on how fast ExtJS renders components after a user action results in a view change. Instead of using arbitary delays with the pause
command, the ideal method is to wait until the element of interest comes within our grasp. For example, to click on an item after waiting for it to appear:
Command: waitForElementPresent
Target: css=span:contains('Do the funky thing')
Command: click
Target: css=span:contains('Do the funky thing')
Relying on arbitrary pauses is not a good idea since timing differences that result from running the tests in different browsers or on different machines will make the test cases flaky.
Non-clickable Items
Some elements can't be triggered by the click
command. It's because the event listener is actually on the container, watching for mouse events on its child elements, that eventually bubble up to the parent. The tab control is one example. To click on the a tab, you have to simulate a mouseDown
event at the tab label:
Command: mouseDownAt
Target: css=.x-tab-strip-text:contains('Options')
Value: 0,0
Field Validation
Form fields (Ext.form.* components) that have associated regular expressions or vtypes for validation will trigger validation with a certain delay (see the validationDelay
property which is set to 250ms by default), after the user enters text or immediately when the field loses focus -- or blurs (see the validateOnDelay
property). In order to trigger field validation after issuing the type Selenium command to enter some text inside a field, you have to do either of the following:
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Triggering Delayed Validation
ExtJS fires off the validation delay timer when the field receives keyup events. To trigger this timer, simply issue a dummy keyup event (it doesn't matter which key you use as ExtJS ignores it), followed by a short pause that is longer than the validationDelay:
Command: keyUp Target: someTextArea Value: x Command: pause Target: 500
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Triggering Immediate Validation
You can inject a blur event into the field to trigger immediate validation:
Command: runScript Target: someComponent.nameTextField.fireEvent("blur")
Checking for Validation Results
Following validation, you can check for the presence or absence of an error field:
Command: verifyElementNotPresent
Target: //*[@id="nameTextField"]/../*[@class="x-form-invalid-msg" and not(contains(@style, "display: none"))]
Command: verifyElementPresent
Target: //*[@id="nameTextField"]/../*[@class="x-form-invalid-msg" and not(contains(@style, "display: none"))]
Note that the "display: none" check is necessary because once an error field is shown and then it needs to be hidden, ExtJS will simply hide error field instead of entirely removing it from the DOM tree.
Element-specific Tips
Clicking an Ext.form.Button
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Option 1
Command: click Target: css=button:contains('Save')
Selects the button by its caption
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Option 2
Command: click Target: css=#save-options button
Selects the button by its id
Selecting a Value from an Ext.form.ComboBox
Command: runScript
Target: with (Ext.getCmp('genderComboBox')) { setValue('female'); fireEvent('select'); }
First sets the value and then explicitly fires the select event in case there are observers.
Solution 2
This blog helped me a lot. He's written quite a lot on the topic and it seems like its still active. The guy also seems to appreciate good design.
He basically talks about using sending javascript to do queries and using the Ext.ComponentQuery.query method to retrieve stuff in the same way you do in your ext app internally. That way you can use xtypes and itemIds and dont have to worry about trying to parse any of the mad auto-generated stuff.
I found this article in particular very helpful.
Might post something a bit more detailed on here soon - still trying to get my head around how to do this properly
Solution 3
I have been testing my ExtJs web application with selenium. One of the biggest problem was selecting an item in the grid in order to do something with it.
For this, I wrote helper method (in SeleniumExtJsUtils class which is a collection of useful methods for easier interaction with ExtJs):
/**
* Javascript needed to execute in order to select row in the grid
*
* @param gridId Grid id
* @param rowIndex Index of the row to select
* @return Javascript to select row
*/
public static String selectGridRow(String gridId, int rowIndex) {
return "Ext.getCmp('" + gridId + "').getSelectionModel().selectRow(" + rowIndex + ", true)";
}
and when I needed to select a row, I'd just call:
selenium.runScript( SeleniumExtJsUtils.selectGridRow("<myGridId>", 5) );
For this to work I need to set my id on the grid and not let ExtJs generate it's own.
Solution 4
To detect that element is visible you use the clause:
not(contains(@style, "display: none")
It's better to use this:
visible_clause = "not(ancestor::*[contains(@style,'display: none')" +
" or contains(@style, 'visibility: hidden') " +
" or contains(@class,'x-hide-display')])"
hidden_clause = "parent::*[contains(@style,'display: none')" +
" or contains(@style, 'visibility: hidden')" +
" or contains(@class,'x-hide-display')]"
Solution 5
Can you provide more insight into the types of problems you're having with extjs testing?
One Selenium extension I find useful is waitForCondition. If your problem seems to be trouble with the Ajax events, you can use waitForCondition to wait for events to happen.
Amazinglykai
Updated on July 08, 2022Comments
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Amazinglykai almost 2 years
just wondering, if there is a button function to create and add/remove tags into/from svg??
Many thanks for helping!
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Andreas Wong about 12 yearsYes, something like
$('#button').click(function() { $('#svg').append($('<div/>')); });
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Amazinglykai about 12 yearshow about if i add in image into that div?
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Andreas Wong about 12 yearsthen you do
var div = $('<div/>'); var img = $('<img/>', {src: '/path/to/image'}); div.append(img);
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Amazinglykai about 12 yearsMay i know what does this line mean? [#image_file_input_field] Thanks for the help..
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anjalis about 12 yearsyou should look at javascript and javascript libraries like jquery, modjo etc...SVG is markup language based on xml so you can use javascript to make dynamical modification to it