Rich GUI Testing: Swing and JavaFX

Rich GUI Testing Made Easy Functional Testing of Swing and JavaFX GUIs Yvonne Wang Price Guidewire Alex Ruiz Oracle tweet: @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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Troubleshooting failures

Failure due to environmental conditions FEST can automatically embed a screenshot of the desktop in a HTML test report (TestNG or JUnit)! Troubleshooting failures

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> Troubleshooting failures

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 Troubleshooting failures

Unable to find component using matcher org.fest.swing.core.NameMatcher[name='label', requireShowing=false]. Troubleshooting failures

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] Troubleshooting failures

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 Troubleshooting failures

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(); Troubleshooting failures

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]. Troubleshooting failures

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] Troubleshooting failures

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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