Building a Test Framework: With Gradle, everything is Groovy

So far, we've seen how to set up the build dependencies in an automated test framework, using Gradle in both IntelliJ and Eclipse. Gradle is more than just a tool to set up build dependencies between third-party software and the Selenium WebDriver framework.  And with the hands-on learning you get from free courses that Gradle, Google, and Udacity put together, you can learn about how Gradle configures tasks, interacts with the file system, handles logging, works with repositories, and sets up tests.

I am really loving how Jeremy Silver explains things in the Gradle for Android and Java course he created on Udacity! Go here to sign up for the free course.

Although I studied it in college and grad school, I have not spent much day-to-day work as a coder until the past year. I love how he walks us through, step-by-step how to follow along with the Gradle exercises he has written, and how Gradle has been integrated with Groovy, a Domain Specific Language (DSL).

Sample Video: Gradle for Android and Java: Groovy Fundamentals:

"Gradle build scripts are written in Groovy. Groovy is a language that runs on the JVM that fills a hole for Java developers who need a scripting language. It's terse, expressive, interoperates extremely well with Java, and has some special features that make it ideally suited for creating domain specific languages.

"While we don't need to know a ton of Groovy to write Gradle build scripts, it helps a lot to experiment a bit with the basics. Gradle provides its own Groovy distribution, so we don't even need to install Groovy to get started. We can just put our Groovy code in a build.gradle file, and then ask Gradle to do anything that requires reading the build script". - Jeremy Silver

If you want to learn more about Gradle:

• Subscribe to the course
• Download the example files
• Install a simple text editor, such as Sublime 3 to practice the exercises
• Once you have a text editor, you can edit the example source code in the text editor, and run the code in your Command Line Interface, such as the MS-Dos Prompt or Mac Terminal.

About Gradle

As near as I can figure out, Groovy was first mentioned on August 2003, in the blog of the inventor, James Strachan's Weblog.

"So I've been musing a little while if its time the Java platform had its own dynamic language designed from the ground up to work real nice with existing code; creating/extending objects normal Java can use and vice versa. Python/Jython's a pretty good base - add the nice stuff from Ruby and maybe sprinkle on some AOP features and we could have a really Groovy new language for scripting Java objects, writing test cases and who knows, even doing real development in it.

"I'm finding that most of the time spent in a TDD style development model is actually coding the unit tests. There's typically lots of unit test code for little application code. Also there does seem to be some baggage when writing unit tests in java. This seems a great opportunity for using a concise & powerful dynamically typed language. So the initial idea was to make a little dynamic language which compiles directly to Java classes and provides all the nice (alleged) productivity benefits of python / ruby but allows you to reuse, extend, implement and test your existing Java code - and use that to write your unit tests. Add a little groovy maven plugin and hey presto, we've boosted the TDD development cycle and created a nice dynamically-typed alternative to Java along the way.

"After some IRC chats with bob a new groovy language for the JVM has started to take shape, called Groovy. Its still very early days and much of this just exists on the GroovyWiki though bob's started work on the lexer & I've started hacking some GroovyTests (unit tests in groovy) together to test the Groovy language implementation whenever we get the compiler/runtime working".

According to Wikipedia, after winning the JAX 2007 innovation award, it was purchased by Pivotal Software. By 2015 it was adopted by Apache.

Groovy programming language thrives under Apache
Infoworld, Oct 26, 2015

"Moving over to the Apache Software Foundation has been good for the Groovy language, with downloads more than doubling inside of six months.

"Orphaned by Pivotal in March, the dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine was picked up by Apache. Since then, downloads have boomed. 'After Groovy joined the Apache Foundation, the monthly downloads doubled to 1.3 million per month. That's a massive increase in less than six months,' said project lead Guillaume Laforge, in a blog post on Restlet.com. 

"Under the jurisdiction of Apache, the project is independent of any one company, Laforge noted. 'By putting the project at the Apache Foundation, it's a stamp saying that the project is here to stay for the long run.'

"[...] The language has niches in tasks like scripting for automating tasks on servers and building of domain-specific languages for business rules. Released in January, Groovy 2.4 added support for Android development. 'Mobile developers have the choice to use Groovy instead of Java for developing mobile applications on the Android platform' Laforge said. "We are definitely seeing quite some usage there.' "

About Apache Groovy:

"Apache Groovy is a powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language, with static-typing and static compilation capabilities, for the Java platform aimed at improving developer productivity thanks to a concise, familiar and easy to learn syntax. It integrates smoothly with any Java program, and immediately delivers to your application powerful features, including scripting capabilities, Domain-Specific Language authoring, runtime and compile-time meta-programming and functional programming". 

• Official Site of Apache Groovy: http://www.groovy-lang.org/
• GitHub for Apache Groovy: https://github.com/apache/groovy

According to the Groovy Language Documentation, Groovy…​

• is an agile and dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine
• builds upon the strengths of Java but has additional power features inspired by languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk
• makes modern programming features available to Java developers with almost-zero learning curve
• provides the ability to statically type check and statically compile your code for robustness and performance
• supports Domain-Specific Languages and other compact syntax so your code becomes easy to read and maintain
• makes writing shell and build scripts easy with its powerful processing primitives, OO abilities and an Ant DSL
• increases developer productivity by reducing scaffolding code when developing web, GUI, database or console applications
• simplifies testing by supporting unit testing and mocking out-of-the-box
• seamlessly integrates with all existing Java classes and libraries
• compiles straight to Java bytecode so you can use it anywhere you can use Java

Gradle and Jenkins

The main reason why I want to learn Gradle and Groovy is because of Jenkins Pipeline. With Jenkins' new Pipeline, instead of of spending an hour or more setting and resetting configurations of the Jenkins jobs that run your automated tests, you can set up Jenkins' jobs programatically.

We just started experimenting with that at work, and I'm trying to learn the basics before it rolls out. And the tools and programming languages they are using is Gradle and Groovy.

Gary Hale: Managing Jenkins with Gradle:

"Recently, Jenkins has brought the 'Jenkins Workflow' plugin into the core of Jenkins Continuous Integration pipeline automation and renamed it the 'Pipeline Plugin'. Pipeline allows users of Jenkins to script automations using the Groovy programming language. This talk does not specifically address these newest features, rather we use the term workflow more generically to describe build automation pipelines defined in Gradle and how to integrate that with Continuous Integration in Jenkins.

"With scripts solutions, again, these are a way to run Groovy scripts within Jenkins that modify the environment. They’re extremely powerful. What you’re really doing is modifying the objects within the running Jenkins instance, and making changes that way. As if you were making those changes through the Gooey. It does require significant understanding of the Jenkins model, right. You have to understand to make this change to this particular attribute, or this job, what are the objects that I have to traverse to get to that particular change. What you find yourself doing is ultimately, there’s not a lot of good information on this. You ultimately end up going out and pulling down the Jenkins source, and looking through all of that. That becomes a little tedious. If I’m only changing one thing, you know, do I really want to spend 20 minutes looking through source code trying to figure out how to do it. It is written Groovy, so it does leverage our existing skill set."

It always surprises me just how much information there is out there: Free courses. Free tutorial videos. Free documentation. It is easy for me to get ahead of myself, spending a weekend learning a tool that I don't end up using on the job. It's good to find an online course that pertains to the work that I am doing.

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer,
Fitbit-Boston

// QA Engineer since Aug. 1996
// Automation developer for [ 1 ] year and still counting!
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