Re: [Watin-development] Patch to find field elements by near by text

[Jeroen v. M. <je...@va...>]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for sending in your ProximityConstaint patch (it makes 
incorporating contributions so easy)!

Regarding adding a method to the Find class, my 2 cents would be 
Find.Near() instead of Find.ByProximity. Then syntax would read 
something like:

ie.TextField(Find.Near("User name")).TypeText("JohnD");

I'm going through your code at the moment. Love the naming of your tests 
methods already!

Jeroen

Jeremy Wadsack schreef:
> Thanks Daaron. That Find.ByProximity is a great suggestion. I actually 
> started down that path, but of course needed access to the DOM and the 
> page to complete it. I working through the details I forgot that I 
> could go back and do that now. I'll add that method and post an 
> updated patch sometime tonight (maybe).
>
> I'll consider the Left, Right, Above, Below option. I'd like to make 
> it smart enough not to have this. If I can come up with test cases 
> where it does /not/ get the correct field and needs this hint then 
> I'll add it as that's really the most logical way to do it.
>
> -- 
> Jeremy Wadsack
> Seven Simple Machines
> www.sevensimplemachines.com <http://www.sevensimplemachines.com>
>
> On Nov 18, 2007 7:27 AM, Daaron Dwyer <da...@gm... 
> <mailto:da...@gm...>> wrote:
>
>     I think it's a great idea, with a few modifications.
>     An extremely small addition of a Find method would make it more
>     seamless, like:
>     Button btn = ie.Button(Find.ByProximity("User Name",Right));
>
>     You probably noticed my other change-- having the developer tell where
>     the target item should be (left, right, above, or below). The search
>     method may get simpler with this addition.
>
>
>     On Nov 17, 2007 6:26 PM, Jeremy Wadsack <jer...@gm...
>     <mailto:jer...@gm...>> wrote:
>     > One of the problems I've seen with our automated web application
>     testing
>     > (with any library) is that the underlying HTML can change and it
>     breaks the
>     > test. We've been struggling with this through our other tools
>     including
>     > making changes to our programming to support testing, etc.
>     >
>     > In thinking about it however, it seemed to me that a visual
>     testing tool
>     > should work just like the human. If I am looking at a page with
>     Username and
>     > Password and associated fields, I usually can figure out what
>     the labels are
>     > for those fields -- even if the labels are not marked as HTML
>     labels. And I
>     > certainly, as a human tester, don't need to look at the HTML to
>     figure out
>     > where to enter my username or password.
>     >
>     > I took this approach and built a new ProximityTextConstraint
>     class that uses
>     > some geometry and measurement of text and elements on the page
>     to try to
>     > find the best field for given text. I've attached a patch file
>     with the
>     > changes including a suite of unit tests to prove the case.
>     >
>     > Basically, you can now search for a field element on a page with
>     code like
>     > this:
>     >
>     >             TextField inputUsername = ie.TextField(new
>     > ProximityTextConstraint("User Name"));
>     >
>     >
>     > It's not complete - although I couldn't build a test case to
>     prove it I
>     > think there are cases where it might grab the wrong element when
>     they are
>     > closely aligned in a stack of fields and labels. I've annotated
>     my suggested
>     > approach in the code comments.
>     >
>     > Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.
>     >
>     > Also included are some minor changes to the code comments in a
>     few places
>     > where I needed more information.
>     >
>     >
>     > --
>     > Jeremy Wadsack
>     > Seven Simple Machines
>     > www.sevensimplemachines.com <http://www.sevensimplemachines.com>
>
>
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