SeConf2015: Notes from Simon Stewart's Keynote Address about WebDriver

Looking to see the latest trends in automated software testing? The Selenium Conference 2015 ( 9/10/2015 - 9/12/2015 ), held in Portland, Oregon, has placed online most of the speaker's notes and slides. http://confengine.com/selenium-conf-2015/schedule. T.J. Maher will be reviewing them over then next couple of weeks and blogging about them.

Selenium Conference 2015: Notes from watching Simon Stewart's "State of the Union" keynote address

Right now, I am too focused on turning myself from a manual software tester of fifteen years, into a junior level Java developer writing automated tests for eCommerce application at work to even think about becoming a Selenium WebDriver Committer, one of the people who help build out the open source tool.



I've made great strides in the past six months, going from being a Software Quality Assurance Engineer who tests software with written testcases I have developed, pointing, clicking and typing with a mouse and a keyboard, into a junior level Java developer, writing tests with Selenium WebDriver, setting up Jenkins jobs to schedule and kick off our Continuous Integration test suite, and Selenium Grid and Sauce Labs to spin up virtual images of Chrome and Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Contributing to the Selenium project, learning as I go, is where I want to be. If only there were more hours in a day! After blogging about the talk in February, discovering the SeConf2014 Program Schedule and listening to most of their talks, I thought they sounded like a fun group of people. I have been looking forward to these talks all year!


SeConf2015: State of the Union
Simon Stewart, Facebook

The Web: Then vs Now

Simon Stewart mentioned that it's a much different world when Selenium RC Test Runner was first released by Jason Huggins while Jason and Simon were back at Thoughtworks (a big sponsor of the agile development movement), where Simon was working on his project HTMLUnit. Both projects became merged into Selenium WebDriver.

The web has changed since WebDriver was first released. People don't just use desktops to surf the web; they use mobile devices, the Internet of Things, web accessibility in everything, with JavaScript being placed in everything.

You aren't constrained to a browser to access the web. Apps can do it, too. Simon pointed out there is a struggle for your attention, between Web Apps and Native Apps. When accessing Facebook, how do you access it most of the time? Do you go to the web site on your Desktop? Or do you view it on your phone through the Mobile App? People are accessing the web not simply through a web page on their computer. Mobile devices have expanded into every part of people's life.

When WebDriver was first launched, they found the web elements to interact and manipulate by traversing the DOM (Document Object Model).

The Document Object Model (DOM) is the model that describes how all elements in an HTML page, like input fields, images, paragraphs etc., are related to the topmost structure: the document itself. By calling the element by its proper DOM name, we can influence it.  

-QuirksMode, Intro to DOM 

Now, Simon says, we don't just have a DOM. We have Shadow DOM, we have web components. It is now a battle between Web vs Native apps. Things like getUserMedia, and Web Works are competing with Native apps on their own turf.
 
Shadow DOM:

• When designing a page, there is always a struggle to separate the content from the design. The Shadow DOM is a way to do that. There is an old tutorial I found on Shadow DOM 101 (12/2013) where with HTML5 and Cascading Style Sheets

Shadow DOM refers to the ability of the browser to include a subtree of DOM elements into the rendering of a document, but not into the main document DOM tree. 

[...] Browser developers realized that coding the appearance and behavior of HTML elements completely by hand is a) hard and b) silly. So they sort of cheated.
They created a boundary between what you, the Web developer can reach and what’s considered implementation details, thus inaccessible to you. The browser however, can traipse across this boundary at will. With this boundary in place, they were able to build all HTML elements using the same good-old Web technologies, out of the divs and spans just like you would. 

- Dimitri Glazkov (1/2011) 

Web Components:

• Dr. Axel Rauschmayer has an article "What happened to Web Components?" (8/2015), the Google project to make it easier for web developers to design pages that other browser manufacturers are integrating. 

How does WebDriver Stay Relevant?

In order for WebDriver to stay relevant, Selenium needs to be able to test Mobile Apps. Native applications have the tree/ node setup in the DOM. Since mobile apps aren't going to go away, WebDriver needs to learn how to use it.

A few points Simon made in his slides need investigation:

"React Native may give us breathing room"

• React is a JavaScript library that Facebook has developed to build user interfaces. http://facebook.github.io/react/ and at https://code.facebook.com/projects/176988925806765/react/
• React Native, introduced in January of 2015 at the ReactJS conference ( video ) is built on top of React to make Android and IOS applications https://facebook.github.io/react-native/
• Both are built on top of Node JS https://nodejs.org/en/

"JSON Wire Protocol is being extended"

• Simon directed us to Johnathan Lipps talk on The Mobile JSON Wire Protocol at the conference.

Jonathan Lipps:
The JSON Wire Protocol (JSONWP) is the version of the WebDriver spec currently implemented by all the Selenium clients. It defines an HTTP API that models the basic objects of web automation---sessions, elements, etc... The JSON Wire Protocol is the magic that powers Selenium's client/server architecture, enables services like Selenium Grid or Sauce Labs to work, and gives you the ability to write your test scripts in any language. 

The JSONWP has served Selenium faithfully for a number of years, but the future of automated testing lies beyond the borders of the web browser. Mobile automation is an essential ingredient in any build, and tools like Appium or Selendroid have made it possible to run tests against mobile apps using the JSONWP. The JSONWP's current incarnation isn't enough to automate all the new behaviors that mobile apps support, however. Complex gestures, multiple device orientations, airplane mode, and the ability to use both native and web contexts, for example, are all essential to mobile automation. 

For this reason the leaders of the Selenium project, in concert with other Selenium-based projects like Appium and Selendroid, met to discuss the future of the JSONWP. We've been working on its next version, called the "Mobile JSON Wire Protocol" (MJSONWP). Appium and Selendroid already implement much of the MJSONWP spec. In this talk I'll dive into the specifics of the MJSONWP extensions, how they relate to the original JSONWP, and how the Selenium clients have begun to implement them. ( video, slides )

Hurdle #1: Automating iOS Mobile Devices

Simon mentioned that iOS is still problematic to automated. Getting automation for any iPhone or iPad to work is difficult because the UI Automation framework currently used was designed only for basic interaction. It keeps breaking when you try to use it for automation... "And there is a one second sleep command with whatever interaction you do".

WebDriverAgent: As a solution at Facebook, Simon Stewart has a tool called WebDriverAgent:

• Runs in the simulator of the device
• WebDriver server for iOS
• Able to run across apps, testing opening apps from yours
• Written in Objective C and runs alongside the app
• Removes middle layers, making it faster
• IOS 7 - 9 supported
• github.com/facebook/WebDriverAgent

... Facebook is working to make this tool OpenSource. The name WebDriverAgent may change.

FBSimulatorControl: Another tool Simon talked about is FBSimulatorControl:

• iOS Simulator Management
• Runs multiple IOS simulators on your Mac at once
• Handles cleaning simulator, installing apps, changing locale, setting up general settings
• With WebDriverAgent, you're able to test force quitting your app and re-opening it.

Simon made the whole audience chuckle by demoing these two tools, showing three apps running at once on the same screen, and saying in a sincere voice:

"If you aren't familiar with this, this is the Facebook application. I suggest downloading it and clicking on some ads?"

Hurdle #2: End-to-End Testing

End-to-End testing is unstable. How do we set up test data? How do we simulate the backend? End to End testing is slow, so we set up parallel tests with Selenium Grid and setting up your own virtual machines, or have other virtual machiens set up for you, such as Sauce Labs, and BrowserStack.

With Selenium WebDriver, we can move beyond testing. It can be use it to monitor your website.

The Future

• WebDriver might stop being an open source project: Having Selenium WebDriver as an open source project may be reaching the end of its shelf life. The Selenium project can't support all the features people want to do by the volunteers in the Open Source community. There needs to be a major re-write.
• WebDriver is becoming a W3C standard: The W3C is "hustling towards being a recommendation".
• WebDriver is becoming supported by major companies: Microsoft's new browser, Edge, supports WebDriver. SauceLabs without any other work, could add that to their browser testing suite because it had the same model they were used to.
• FireFox is implementing WebDriver, too: Mozilla Firefox is coming up with their implementation of WebDriver called Marionette.

-T.J. Maher
 Sr. QA Engineer, Fitbit
 // Manual tester, 15 years
 // Automated tester for [ 6 ] months and counting

Please note: 'Adventures in Automation' is a personal blog about automated testing. It is not an official blog of Fitbit.com.