Designing an webtesting DSL to be implemented by different Web testing drivers - should we mix primitive and non-primitive operations?

Question

We are implementing a web test automation project for some intranet applications.

To easy the writing of each test, we are designing a Java DSL that can be implemented using different adapters (we've chosen Sahi and Selenium/WebDriver so far, as we want to measure them side by side in terms of performance, readability, maintainability, etc.).

We've identified two types of operations in the DSL:

1) Primitive: its implementation will surely have to deal with HTML/Selenium/Sahi/etc specifics. Example: (using Sahi web driver)

public void insertProjectRecord(String projectName) {
  b.link("Create new project").click();
  b.textbox("ctl00$ProjectForm$Name").setValue(projectName);
  b.span("Insert").click();
}

2) Non-Primitive: an operation worth including in our DSL for reusability purposes, although that can be built using primitives. Example:

public void createFormulation(String projectName, String rteDummyText) {
  goToAddProjectPage();
  insertProjectRecord(projectName);
  switchToEditModeForFirstAvailableRecord();
  editBeneficiaryCountries();
  editAcronyms(rteDummyText);
  saveSectionChanges();
}

Question: we initially started with an interface with only primitive operations, but later we changed it to an abstract class in order to include the non-primitive methods (which a specific implementations are allowed to override, if needed). However, it doesn't feel "OK" to mix primitives and non-primitives, and the list of methods will certainly became very long.

What other approach would you suggest and/or explore?

Answer 1

I would highly recommend using the Page Object Model. In this you create a class for each page and then abstract items away.

I wrote a blog post on writing maintainable tests here. You can see my blog post on the Page object model here

So your object could be like below.

public class Home
{
    private readonly ISelenium _selenium;

    /// <summary>
    /// Instantiates a new Home Page object. Pass in the Selenium object created in the test SetUp(). 
    /// When the object in instantiated it will navigate to the root
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="selenium">Selenium Object created in the tests
    public Home(ISelenium selenium)
    {
        this._selenium = selenium;
        if (!selenium.GetTitle().Contains("home"))
        {
            selenium.Open("/");
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Navigates to Selenium Tutorials Page. Selenium object wll be passed through
    /// </summary>
    /// <returns>SeleniumTutorials representing the selenium_training.htm</returns>
    public SeleniumTutorials ClickSelenium()
    {
        _selenium.Click("link=selenium");
        _selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
        return new SeleniumTutorials(_selenium);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Click on the blog or blog year and then wait for the page to load
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="year">blog or blog year
    /// <returns>Object representing /blog.* pages</returns>
    public Blog ClickBlogYear(string year)
    {
        _selenium.Click("link=" + year);
        _selenium.WaitForPageToLoad("30000");
        return new Blog(_selenium);
    }
    // Add more methods as you need them
}

public class SeleniumXPathTutorial
{
    private readonly ISelenium _selenium;

    public const string FirstInput = "number1";
    public const string SecondInput = "number2";
    public const string Total = "total";

    public SeleniumXPathTutorial(ISelenium selenium)
    {
        this._selenium = selenium;
    }

    public bool IsInputOnScreen(string locator)
    {
        return _selenium.IsElementPresent(locator);
    }
}

and then the test class would be like

[TestFixture]
public class SiteTests
{
    private ISelenium selenium;
    [SetUp]
    public void Setup()
    {
        selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*chrome", "http://www.theautomatedtester.co.uk");
        selenium.Start();
    }

    [TearDown]
    public void Teardown()
    {
        selenium.Stop();
    }

    [Test]
    public void ShouldLoadHomeThenGoToXpathTutorial()
    {
        Home home = new Home(selenium);
        SeleniumTutorials seleniumTutorials = home.ClickSelenium();
        SeleniumXPathTutorial seleniumXPathTutorial = seleniumTutorials.ClickXpathTutorial();
        Assert.True(seleniumXPathTutorial.
                    IsInputOnScreen(SeleniumXPathTutorial.FirstInput));
        Assert.True(seleniumXPathTutorial
                    .IsInputOnScreen(SeleniumXPathTutorial.SecondInput));
        Assert.True(seleniumXPathTutorial
                    .IsInputOnScreen(SeleniumXPathTutorial.Total));
    }
}