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Automating simple web forms

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  Automating simple web forms Eric Christopherson <echristopherson@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 21:06 -0500
    Re: Automating simple web forms Bret Pettichord <bpettichord@gmail.com> - 2011-03-30 22:24 -0500
    Re: Automating simple web forms Marc Weber <marco-oweber@gmx.de> - 2011-03-31 17:35 -0500
      Re: Automating simple web forms Eric Christopherson <echristopherson@gmail.com> - 2011-03-31 19:42 -0500
        Re: Automating simple web forms Adam Prescott <adam@aprescott.com> - 2011-04-01 06:46 -0500
        Re: Automating simple web forms Brian Candler <b.candler@pobox.com> - 2011-04-01 08:07 -0500
      Re: Automating simple web forms Richard Conroy <richard.conroy@gmail.com> - 2011-04-01 07:05 -0500

#2012 — Automating simple web forms

What would be the best headless web testing/automation library to use,
given that:
1. I want to automate filling in and submitting forms on one web site,
which uses only a little JavaScript.
2. I want something that balances ease of use and stability, and is
reasonably actively maintained
?

I've been playing around with Watir and gotten it to do what I want,
but it involves a live browser; I would like something headless. When
I asked on IRC, I was told Capybara was good -- and it does look good,
but I'm not sure if it has too many moving parts for my purposes.

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#2020

[Note:  parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Have you looked at Celerity?
On Mar 30, 2011 9:07 PM, "Eric Christopherson" <echristopherson@gmail.com>
wrote:
> What would be the best headless web testing/automation library to use,
> given that:
> 1. I want to automate filling in and submitting forms on one web site,
> which uses only a little JavaScript.
> 2. I want something that balances ease of use and stability, and is
> reasonably actively maintained
> ?
>
> I've been playing around with Watir and gotten it to do what I want,
> but it involves a live browser; I would like something headless. When
> I asked on IRC, I was told Capybara was good -- and it does look good,
> but I'm not sure if it has too many moving parts for my purposes.
>

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#2067

Excerpts from Eric Christopherson's message of Thu Mar 31 04:06:32 +0200 2011:
> What would be the best headless web testing/automation library to use,
> given that:
> 1. I want to automate filling in and submitting forms on one web site,
> which uses only a little JavaScript.
> 2. I want something that balances ease of use and stability, and is
> reasonably actively maintained
> ?

The only headless browser supporting JS I know about is HTMLUnit
(written in Java). I remember having seen some libraries providing Ruby
interfaces for it.

If you don't need JS mechanize etc are alternatives.

Marc Weber

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#2074

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Marc Weber <marco-oweber@gmx.de> wrote:
> Excerpts from Eric Christopherson's message of Thu Mar 31 04:06:32 +0200 2011:
>> What would be the best headless web testing/automation library to use,
>> given that:
>> 1. I want to automate filling in and submitting forms on one web site,
>> which uses only a little JavaScript.
>> 2. I want something that balances ease of use and stability, and is
>> reasonably actively maintained
>> ?
>
> The only headless browser supporting JS I know about is HTMLUnit
> (written in Java). I remember having seen some libraries providing Ruby
> interfaces for it.

Yeah, I looked a little at that. Apparently you can use it from within
Selenium and Capybara, and probably others.

> If you don't need JS mechanize etc are alternatives.

I just discovered I really don't need JS in this case, so I will try
mechanize. I'd still like to know the best route to go in the future
when I do need JS though.

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#2101

[Note:  parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 1:42 AM, Eric Christopherson <
echristopherson@gmail.com> wrote:

> > The only headless browser supporting JS I know about is HTMLUnit
> > (written in Java). I remember having seen some libraries providing Ruby
> > interfaces for it.
>
> Yeah, I looked a little at that. Apparently you can use it from within
> Selenium and Capybara, and probably others.
>
> > If you don't need JS mechanize etc are alternatives.
>
> I just discovered I really don't need JS in this case, so I will try
> mechanize. I'd still like to know the best route to go in the future
> when I do need JS though.
>

There's a non-Ruby headless browser with JavaScript I recently discovered
called PhantomJS: http://www.phantomjs.org/

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#2106

Eric Christopherson wrote in post #990286:
> I just discovered I really don't need JS in this case, so I will try
> mechanize.

I suggest you have a look at cucumber too (cukes.info) - this is a sort 
of DSL which sits on top. I used it with webrat, but I expect it 
supports capybara etc these days, and there are howtos on using it with 
watir and so forth.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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#2103

[Note:  parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:35 PM, Marc Weber <marco-oweber@gmx.de> wrote:

> Excerpts from Eric Christopherson's message of Thu Mar 31 04:06:32 +0200
> 2011:
> > What would be the best headless web testing/automation library to use,
> > given that:
> > 1. I want to automate filling in and submitting forms on one web site,
> > which uses only a little JavaScript.
> > 2. I want something that balances ease of use and stability, and is
> > reasonably actively maintained
> > ?.
>
> The only headless browser supporting JS I know about is HTMLUnit
> (written in Java). I remember having seen some libraries providing Ruby
> interfaces for it.
>

Celerity.

It is also pretty good, and bloody fast. It also has some nice features wrt
HTTPS and certificates (inherited from the HttpUnit library). The Ruby API
is pretty good - a nice example of how to wrap a Java API with Ruby.

Capybara supports Celerity as a driver, but I think there is talk of
removing it.

-- 
http://richardconroy.blogspot.com | http://twitter.com/RichardConroy

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