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| Watir (Web Application Testing in Ruby, pronounced water), is an open-source (BSD) family of ] libraries for automating web browsers. It drives ], ], ], ] and ], and is available as a ] gem. Watir was primarily developed by Bret Pettichord and Paul Rogers. | |||
| == Functionality == | == Functionality == | ||
Revision as of 22:43, 5 October 2012
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| Developer(s) | Bret Pettichord, Charley Baker, Angrez Singh, Jari Bakken, Jarmo Pertman, Hugh McGowan, Andreas Tolf Tolfsen, Paul Rogers, Dave Hoover, Sai Venkatakrishnan, Tom Copeland |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 4.0 / September 30, 2012 (2012-09-30) |
| Written in | Ruby (programming language) |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | software testing framework for web applications |
| License | BSD license |
| Website | watir |
Watir (Web Application Testing in Ruby, pronounced water), is an open-source (BSD) family of Ruby libraries for automating web browsers. It drives Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari, and is available as a RubyGems gem. Watir was primarily developed by Bret Pettichord and Paul Rogers.
Functionality
Watir makes use of the fact that Ruby has built in Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) capabilities. As such it is possible to drive Internet Explorer programmatically. Watir operates differently than HTTP based test tools, which operate by simulating a browser. Instead Watir directly drives the browser through the OLE protocol, which is implemented over the Component Object Model (COM) architecture.
The COM permits interprocess communication (such as between Ruby and Internet Explorer) and dynamic object creation and manipulation (which is what the Ruby program does to the Internet Explorer). Microsoft calls this OLE automation, and calls the manipulating program an automation controller. Technically, the Internet Explorer process is the server and serves the automation objects, exposing their methods; while the Ruby program then becomes the client which manipulates the automation objects.
Watir-webdriver
Watir-webdriver is a modern version of the Watir API based on Selenium. Selenium 2.0 (selenium-webdriver) aims to be the reference implementation of the WebDriver specification. In Ruby, Jari Bakken has implemented the Watir API as a wrapper around the Selenium 2.0 API. Not only is Watir-webdriver derived from Selenium 2.0, it is also built from the HTML specification, so Watir-webdriver should always be compatible with existing W3C specifications.
Similar tools
- Celerity is similar to Watir, but emulates a browser instead of driving a real browser.
- Vapir (pronounced /ˈveɪpər/) is a Watir fork with bug fixes, API changes and new functionality.
- WatiN (pronounced What-in) stands for Web Application Testing In .NET. It is similar to Watir, but is implemented in .NET Framework.
- Watij (pronounced wattage) stands for Web Application Testing in Java. It is similar to Watir, but implemented in Java.
- Win32-Watir is similar to Watir, but implemented in Perl.
- win-control is similar to Watir, but implemented in Gambit (Scheme implementation).
- Selenium (software) is a portable software testing framework for web applications.
- iMacros is similar to Watir, but includes visual recording, web scraping support and a COM object for use with any programming language (Windows only)
- Watir for Rails is similar to Watir, but it uses Selenium WebDriver and is integrated to Rails 3.
