Željko Filipin's Blog on Software and Testing

My developer pointed me to Benjamin Keen’s Data Generator.

This little program lets you generate large volumes of random, custom data for use in testing software.

Looks good. I will try it and write more about it if I find some inspiration (and time).

This is slightly edited conversation Is there a way to make file_field.set faster? from wtr-general mailing list.

Me:

Is there a way to make file_field.set faster?

I have noticed that this is the slowest part of my tests. It takes about 10 seconds to set file field. I have read that it can not be set directly because that would be security issue, but I wonder what I could do to make it faster. I upload extremely small files (a few bytes), but I have to do it frequently, and every time it takes about 10 seconds just to set file field.

Mark Cain:

This works for me and it is much faster because it uses the handle of the object.

def startClicker(button, waitTime=5, user_input=nil)
hwnd = @@ie.enabled_popup(waitTime) # get a handle if one exists
if (hwnd) # yes there is a popup
w = WinClicker.new
if (user_input)
w.setTextValueForFileNameField(hwnd, “#{user_input}”)
end
sleep 3 # I put this in to see the text being input it is not necessary to work
w.clickWindowsButton_hwnd(hwnd, “#{button}”) # “OK” or whatever the name on the button is
w = nil # this is just cleanup
end
end

Me:

startClicker works double faster than file_field.set.

Then I removed line with “sleep 3″.

Me:

It is now even faster (for three seconds) after I removed line with “sleep 3″ (when I noticed that comment says that it can be removed) .

file_field.set needed approximately 10,6 seconds to set file field, startClicker 4,4, and when I removed “sleep 3″, it is down to 1,4. That saved me approximately 9 seconds for each file upload (and I do it a lot).

Paul Rogers also suggested AutoIt, but this works fast enough, so I did not even try it.