AJAX and web testing

[Simone Gianni <s....@thebug.it>]

Hi All,
we recently moved to ajax in our latest project. We use Selenium for web 
tests. After the move we had a lot of problems with Selenium. This is 
what happens :
- Selenium executes a SelectAndWait (or clickAndWait)
- It then waits for a page reload
- It detects a page reload using an onload on the test iframe.
- Obviously, ajax does not reload the page, so Selenium waits for ever.

The only relevant document i've found about this matter on the internet 
( 
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/wa-selenium-ajax/index.html 
) uses the worse solution : pauses 500 ms after a click.

We currently modified selenium to achieve a different behaviour : the 
cocoon forms _handleBrowserUpdate and _continue are overridden at run 
time with two custom functions that triggers Selenium page reloaded 
event after a _handleBrowserUpdate unless a continue has been received.

This solution works correctly, but it's a hack. IMMO we should find a 
better solution for executing webtests on a cocoon ajax enabled site ... 
just some random thoughts :

- Support and document how to use Dojo AOP to wrap a method around 
cocoon ajax calls (I tried this one but didn't managed to make it work).
- Provide some "classic" javascript hooks inside the cocoon ajax code, 
so that implementing some jsavascript functions a web test suite can be 
notified when an ajax transaction is started and ended.
- If there is a way of doing this not touching the cocoon ajax code (i 
was thinking about instrumenting/intercepting the 
dojo.hostenv.getXmlhttpObject()) we should document it somewhere.

I've already opened a bug for this problem on Selenium Jira, and could 
probably submit a solution if we find a way to make it "dojo based" and 
not that cocoon specific as the one I used.

Simone

P.S. FYI this is the code I added to selenium-browserbot.js if anybody 
need it; it's an untidy solution, but works until we find a better one.

in selenium-browserbot.js, method BrowserBot.prototype.getCurrentPage = 
function(), added :

        if (this.frame.contentWindow.dojo) {
            var contentWindow = this.frame.contentWindow;
            var cocoonProto = 
contentWindow..cocoon.forms.CFormsForm.prototype;
            if (cocoonProto._oldHandleBrowserUpdate == undefined) {
                cocoonProto._oldHandleBrowserUpdate = 
cocoonProto._handleBrowserUpdate;
                cocoonProto._oldContinue = cocoonProto._continue;
            }
            var widget = 
contentWindow.dojo.widget.getWidgetById('CFormsForm_0');
            if (widget != null) {
                widget.bot = this;
                widget._handleBrowserUpdate = function (request) {
                    this.bot.continued = false;
                    this._oldHandleBrowserUpdate(request);
                    this.bot._handleDojoBrowserUpdate();
                }
                widget._continue = function () {
                    this._oldContinue();
                    this.bot.continued = true;
                }
            }
        }

and soon after a new function :

BrowserBot.prototype._handleDojoBrowserUpdate = function() {
    if (!this.continued) this.recordPageLoad();
}

-- 
Simone Gianni

Re: AJAX and web testing

[Sylvain Wallez <sy...@apache.org>]

Simone Gianni wrote:
> Hi All,
> we recently moved to ajax in our latest project. We use Selenium for
> web tests. After the move we had a lot of problems with Selenium. This
> is what happens :
> - Selenium executes a SelectAndWait (or clickAndWait)
> - It then waits for a page reload
> - It detects a page reload using an onload on the test iframe.
> - Obviously, ajax does not reload the page, so Selenium waits for ever.
>
> The only relevant document i've found about this matter on the
> internet (
> http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/wa-selenium-ajax/index.html
> ) uses the worse solution : pauses 500 ms after a click.
>
> We currently modified selenium to achieve a different behaviour : the
> cocoon forms _handleBrowserUpdate and _continue are overridden at run
> time with two custom functions that triggers Selenium page reloaded
> event after a _handleBrowserUpdate unless a continue has been received.
>
> This solution works correctly, but it's a hack. IMMO we should find a
> better solution for executing webtests on a cocoon ajax enabled site
> ... just some random thoughts :
>
> - Support and document how to use Dojo AOP to wrap a method around
> cocoon ajax calls (I tried this one but didn't managed to make it work).
> - Provide some "classic" javascript hooks inside the cocoon ajax code,
> so that implementing some jsavascript functions a web test suite can
> be notified when an ajax transaction is started and ended.
> - If there is a way of doing this not touching the cocoon ajax code (i
> was thinking about instrumenting/intercepting the
> dojo.hostenv.getXmlhttpObject()) we should document it somewhere.
>
> I've already opened a bug for this problem on Selenium Jira, and could
> probably submit a solution if we find a way to make it "dojo based"
> and not that cocoon specific as the one I used.

You can do it using Dojo's nice AOP features to intercept the method
that handles the browser update sent by Cocoon:

  <script>
      dojo.addOnLoad(function() {
          dojo.require("cocoon.ajax.BUHandler");
          dojo.event.connect(cocoon.ajax.BUHandler.prototype,
"processResponse", function() {
              alert("Page has been updated!")
          })
      });
  </script>


Sylvain

-- 
Sylvain Wallez
http://bluxte.net
Apache Software Foundation Member