Planning to adopt Watir for our UI testing needs - Is it the right tool?

Question

We are using Qtp as a testing tool, and currently planning to move to an open source testing tool. We have zeroed in on Watir and Selenium as two potential tools for this purpose. We have done some study of these two products and have liked Watir for its neat and powerful API and ease of use. We are only looking at testing on IE; hence cross-browser support provided by Selenium is probably not so important.

But, as my research on Watir progressed, there is one thing about Watir that is disturbing me a little. That is the losing momentum that I see about the product. Most of the articles, success stories and quotes are pretty old - say earlier to 2009. Hardly anything exciting being written about Watir in 2010. To add to this, I hear this story about Webdriver going to replace Watir. Though i couldn't find many articles on Watir-Webdriver, i saw this article on watir that is somewhat of a concern to me as it says watir is DEAD.

http://www.natontesting.com/2010/04/14/explaining-watir-selenium-and-webdriver/

We do not want to start with a product that is probably already dead, or dying.

Can any one please tell me what exactly is happening in Watir and what is the roadmap ahead?

Thanks, Babitha

Answer 1

You can also check out the source code and it's history directly from GitHub https://github.com/bret/watir/commits/master/ to see if there's any activity.

But it's true that Watir had some longer period of inactivity in terms of releasing new versions http://rubygems.org/gems/watir/versions

As you can see then the time between 1.6.5 and 1.6.6 was almost a year. But nevertheless Watir is not dead nor planning to die. Also, you have got that right about Watir-Webdriver being Watir 2.0 in the future, but i'd not recommend it just yet for IE due to it's early alpha state and some pretty critical bugs. It's repo is here https://github.com/jarib/watir-webdriver

If you have any questions or problems related with Watir, don't be afraid to ask them in here or in Google groups at http://groups.google.com/group/watir-general

Answer 2

Watir is alive. Take a look at watir.com, you will find all information there. If you have further questions, ask.

Answer 3

In the same blog (that the page on natontesting.com mentions), Alister has discussed the impact of web driver on the future of WATIR.

He says:

If you’re a Watir user, it doesn’t really make that much difference. If you think of automated web testing as a car, Watir is the steering wheel and dashboard, which interact with the engine. Allowing Watir users to use WebDriver is like providing an additional engine choice, but keeping the steering wheel and dash the same.

Ultimately, I think that Watir will remain a very popular automated web testing tool, one that has been designed by testers for testers. I can see the usage of WatiN and Watij reducing as more developers move to Selenium 2.0/WebDriver which will offer the same functionality as Watir using a different API and multiple programming languages. If WebDriver can focus on the detail of controlling browsers, ultimately Watir will be a better tool as more effort can be spent on improving the Watir API, upgrading the steering wheel and dash, so to speak.

Answer 4

The point of that article is that both Selenium 2.0 and Watir 2.0 are incorporating Webdriver technology. Watir just put out a new release last month, Watir users are sharing tips everyday on the Watir General mailing list.

Answer 5

If I started a new framework today, I would be most likely to use Watir. I always keep an open mind, so I cannot guarantee what I would use. Maybe the project involves flex so I would try FunFX, or java developers want to be involved so I would consider webdriver with junit. But I would have no concern about using Watir into the future. I have used it for the past three years. I have known people who used it even before that. The community is too strong to die.

Answer 6

We used Watir for a while but ran into problems maintaining our Ruby environment. We're not a Ruby shop, so when we updated our version of Ruby and Watir stopped working we weren't fit to really understand why the breaks were occurring.

The lack of a good recorder was also a problem for us.

So we switched to Selenium, which has great recording capability and runs right in an NUnit test (we're onthe .Net platform), but Selenium doesn't execute successfully every single time. We had to write retry wrappers around the calls since they would work sometimes and not others.

Our quest to find something easily recordable that runs reliably continues. I've seen a lot on the forum about WebDriver and Sahi so I'll look into those. As long as we can spit out XML so we can integrate with CC, we're good.

Answer 7

As you already read, the WATIR community is alive and kicking! I just started the Automated Regression initiative at my company and one of the requirements was to utilize an open source tool (or a group of them). I came across WATIR and since its FOSS, Easy to use, and uses Ruby, I couldn't help but suggest the tool to Management.

Here's a tip (if you want it or not!):

WATIR is great stand-alone, but when bundled with CruiseControl (another FOSS tool that is a CI [Continuous Integration] Server), you can run your regression scripts all day long and get the xUnit reports from it (remember to utilize Ruby's built in Test Unit framework). Makes it real useful for the higher ups and your devs.

WATIR is alive and kicking and just recently came out with an update (1.67). The wiki is killer (http://wiki.openqa.org/display/WTR/) so go there first for your Q&As.

Have Fun with WATIR. Beats the pants outta silly old QTP any day of the week!

Hit me up if you have questions since this is still fresh in my head :)