rich gui testing: swing and javafx

Rich GUI Testing Made EasyFunctional Testing of Swing and JavaFX GUIs

Yvonne Wang PriceGuidewire

Alex RuizOracletweet: @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




Requirements for robust GUI testing

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




Writing testable GUIs

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




Top-3 must-have features in a GUI testing library Intuitive API for test creation Concise and easy-to-read API Ability to aid developers troubleshoot test

failures

Agenda




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

http://fest.easytesting.org/

Agenda




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




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




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

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