A fluent, feedback-rich API for WebDriver or other similar libraries

redsniff is a thin higher-level API on top of Selenium Webdriver that integrates with hamcrest to enable writing expressive, effective automated tests for interacting with, and making assertions against websites.

(It is originally based on the experimental Selenium Lift-Style API but ended up diverging substantially.)

###Fluent Interface The style used is as a Fluent interface, or Internal DSL.

This means it uses certain tricks to make the API look very readable, albeit.with(aLotOf(brackets())), almost like an English sentence if you took the punctuation out.

It tends to encourage a declarative rather than procedural way of thinking about things - what, not how.

###Quick example

we create a RedsniffWebDriverTester as below

RedsniffWebDriverTester browser = new RedsniffWebDriverTester( new ChromeDriver() );
browser.goTo("http://my-url.com");

Then you can write assertions like this:

browser.assertPresenceOf( dropDown().that( hasName("a_drop-down") ) );

which means, browser, please confirm the presence of a drop down item that has name "a_drop-down"

i.e. on the browser, check that a dropdown whose 'name' attribute is "a_drop-down" is present somewhere on the page

###More Examples Here are some more - the syntax is designed so that what it does is obvious without explanation or comments :

browser.goTo("http://www.wikipedia.org");
browser.type("clowns", into( textBox().that( hasName("search") ) ));
browser.clickOn( button("OK") );
browser.assertThatThe( third(dropDown().that( hasName("a_drop-down") ), isEnabled() );

You can also just use css selectors:

browser.assertThatThe( first( $(".itemselector") ) , isEnabled() );
broswer.clickOn( $("#orderSubmit") );

###Feedback - a first class citizen redsniff puts a very high value on feedback - diagnostic messages that appear when assertions and expectations fail. Some messages you could get from above examples are:

Expected: a(n) 3rd drop-down that has name "a_drop-down" to match is <enabled>
but: only found <2> such elements


Expected: 3rd drop-down that has name "a_drop-down" to match  is <enabled>
but:
element was <disabled>


Expected: a unique textbox that has name "search" to type "clowns" into, 
but:
Did not find any textbox that: {has name "search"}
<input> (name:Search)  - not matched because name  was:
  '[S]earch'
instead of:
  '[s]earch'

By contrast, using WebDriver directly would have resulted in just ElementNotFoundException in many cases, and it may take you some time to realise you had, for instance, misspelled an element name.

###Why 'redsniff'? Because, when your test fails and goes red, this can help you sniff out the reason. Also, "hamcrest" is an anagram of "matchers", which is the core concept in that library, and so this is an anagram of "finders", which is the main concept in this library.

Well, nearly, there's an extra 'f' but nothing is ever perfect - which is why we need flexible test frameworks.

##Goal redsniff aims to make the writing and understanding of the intent of tests easier, whilst diagnosing clearly why they fail, which is often a frustrating and time-consuming process when we first write the test.

Ideally you should be able to express what you need without for-loops, anonymous sub-classes, etc.

Whatever you can express should do what you'd expect it to do by examining the expression.

It also

• allows for less brittle tests by allowing you to specify as much or as little as you need
• has high compositionality - expressions can be plugged together in different ways, like Lego
• deals with synchronization issues particularly for AJAX-enabled apps, where elements can appear and disappear
• particular support for testing tables of data, including csv downloads
• has easy support for creating custom abstractions specific to your web app and domain

###Further Examples Things within other things:

browser.clickOn(button("OK").withinA(form().that(hasName("orderForm")));

potential error feedback:

Could not find form that has name "orderForm"
within which to search for {button that: {has value "OK"}}
because
No element with name "orderForm" found at all

Element based on sub-elements

browser.find(div().that(
    hasSubElement( form().that(hasName("orderForm")));

We may also want to do the same action in several related places. The following will try to tick the second box found in each form - (if any forms it finds don't have that many checkboxes within them it will fail..)

browser.inEach(form())
                .tick( second( checkbox() ));

More about Finders

####Creating Higher level abstractions

You can easily create higher-level finders for the items most relevant to your application and give them nice descriptions.

 browser.clickOn(menuItem("Home"));
 
 Expected: a(n) "Home" menu item
 but:
 ....

####Support for tables

You can [make assertions about data in an html table] (https://github.com/jhc-systems/redsniff/wiki/Support-for-tables), being as specific as you would like to be.

####Assertions about Downloads

You can make assertions about downloadable files, such as a CSV download, using the table assertions.

####Waiting You can wait for an event, such as the presence or absence of a finder, or for it to match some condition:

broswer.waitFor( div().that( hasId("XXX") ));
browser.waitFor( absenceOf( button("OK") ) )
browser.waitFor( expectationOfMatching( button("OK"), isDisabled() ) )

####Hooks for error pages Sometimes your test is looking for a button to click on, say, and it's not there because actually something serious has gone wrong and there's a giant stack trace on the screen.

It would be nice if the test told you this rather than just saying "no button found".

Redsniff helps by allowing you to register Checkers, which you can set to run either before every assertion you make, or only after a failed assertion.

When using these, if a stack trace was being shown in the browser then the test would include it in the test failure message (which, if you're running in an IDE like eclipse and have the project loaded, you can click to take you to the failed line)

 browser.clickOn( button("OK") );
 
 While expecting: a button that has value "OK" to click on
 Got error page:
 WicketMessage: Can't instantiate page using constructor public webapps.test.utils.TestPage()
 Root cause:
			java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to load ApplicationContext
		    at org.springframework.test.context.TestContext.getApplicationContext(TestContext.java:157)
                        ...

• Selenide
• FluentLenium

• Nic Infante

• Daniel Ecer
• Graeme Oswald

• Selenium Lift-Style API a similar project by Robert Chatley which inspired this one

• Steve Freeman ideas about table matching from workshop sessions as well as being one of the authors of Hamcrest

• Ebselen - File download code modified from code in this project

• Dean Chapman Ideas, feedback, encouragement