Recently I have asked if people are interested in creating Watir site at stackexchange.com. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people that are interested. Just today I have read that new stackexchange.com sites can be created, so I have created Watir site at stackexchange.com.

I think stackoverflow.com software (also used at stackexchange.com) is the best solution for Watir support (and almost any other kind of support).

If you think Watir site at stackexchange.com is a good idea, all you have to do is:

- go to Watir site at stackexchange.com
- click link “Follow It!”
- enter your e-mail
- click button “Submit”

(I was tempted to write this as a Watir script.)

Optionally, you can add on-topic and off-topic questions, and vote on other questions as on- or off-topic.

Feel free to spread the word on your Twitter/Facebook/blog…

If you want to learn more about stackexchange.com, read the FAQ.

New round of free advertising of open source projects at stackoverflow.com has just started.

We had 17 votes the last time, 6 were needed to be displayed at stackoverflow.com. The ad got a few complaints about not having any text. (I just copied our logo.)

This time I took a Creative Commons photo and added some text:

browser.goto 'watir.com'
# to learn more

browser.goto 'github.com/bret/watir'
browser.span(:text=>'Fork').click
# to contribute

Feel free to vote or comment for Watir ad at stackoverflow.com.

If anybody has an idea for different photo or text, please let me know.

Even better, read the stackoverflow.com blog post, create an add and submit it. Then let us know so we can vote for it. (There can be more that one proposal.)

Watir Podcast Logo

Numbers

A few days ago it was 2 years since I published the first Watir Podcast.

In this 2 years I have published 34 podcasts with people literally all over the world. Lately I am trying to produce a podcast a month, and I am trying to keep it about 30 minutes long. I have recorded podcasts as short as 5 minutes, but also longer than 70 minutes.

Google Analytics and FeedBurner say the numbers are (mostly) going up. FeedBurner says about 100 people is subscribed to the podcast feed lately.

Google Analytics

FeedBurner

The following table lists downloads since December 2009, when I started using Podtrac. The first number is total downloads, the second number is unique downloads. Please notice #26.

I am glad to see that podcasts as old as 1 or even 2 years are still downloaded.

Thank You

After two years, what to say? It was a lot of fun, I hope it will not end soon.

I would like to thank everybody that wanted to talk with me. I would probably stop recording podcast if I did not have a lot of help from Watir Podcast Team. A big thank you to all of you that co-hosted a podcast, contributed music and logo, worked on the web site, edited audio… I could not do it without you.

I would like to thank Bret Pettichord for agreeing to record the first podcast, Alan Baird that worked on the web site, and Gregg Yows that co-hosted a lot of times and contributed a lot of music.

I would probably give up a long time ago if Tiffany Fodor did not offer to edit the audio and create show notes. Tiffany, thank you.

Also, a bit thank you to every listener. Yes, you too. Well, if you were not listening, all this would not make a lot of sense.

If you have some time, and you would like to contribute to the podcast, please let me know. I need help with finding guests, co-hosting, I am always looking for music that can be published under a Creative Commons licence… If you would like to take over Watir Podcast, let me know. I would help you with everything. I have other stuff to do, but if nobody is interested, I will not let the podcast die.

I did not mention a lot of people by name, because this blog post would end up being too long. You know who you are. Yes, you. Thanks.

I found a link to Play Pacman with Selenium 2 blog post at Watir General Google group and I decided to try it with Watir.

The best score so far is 3150, but the best score recorded is 2280. Dave says he got to 2660 with Selenium.

The source is on github.com/zeljkofilipin/pacman. Feel free to fork.

My slides:

I took a photo or two:

My slides:

Video of my talk:

Željko Filipin – Web application testing Showoff from IT showoff on Vimeo.

I took a photo or two:

[14:29] <alan_baird> jarib: if you are still around I have a follow up webdriver question for you
[14:36] <jarib> alan_baird: shoot
[14:36] <alan_baird> ok
[14:36] <alan_baird> so, in the podcast, Simon says that Webdriver is built on top of html unit
[14:37] <alan_baird> is that correct?
[14:38] <jarib> it has several backends
[14:39] <jarib> htmlunit being one of them
[14:39] <jarib> in addition it drives IE, Firefox, Chrome, with support for Opera, iPhone and Android on the way
[14:39] <alan_baird> ok
[14:40] <jarib> was the podcast that confusing? ouch :/
[14:40] <alan_baird> so, it seems kind of analagous to what a JVM does for different operating systems?
[14:40] <jarib> i guess we ended up talking too much about HtmlUnit
[14:40] <alan_baird> well, I don’t know that it was all that confusing
[14:40] <jarib> you might say that
[14:40] <alan_baird> but, in trying to type up the show notes I’ve come up with my own questions
[14:41] <jarib> it gives you a common interface to the various browsers
[14:41] <alan_baird> ok
[14:41] <alan_baird> so, that common interface is written in Java right?
[14:41] <jarib> not really – there’s bindings in java, ruby, c# and python
[14:42] <jarib> the java and ruby bindings are the most complete
[14:42] <alan_baird> ok
[14:42] <alan_baird> i guess I’m not real familiar with the bindings concept, but I guess I can get the gist of it
[14:43] <alan_baird> but basically there is this thing at the core (webdriver) which can talk to the browsers natively
[14:43] <jarib> alan_baird: these slides may be helpful: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dgpzbjs_33cxsxd9dd
[14:43] <jarib> check slide 11+
[14:44] <alan_baird> k
[14:44] <alan_baird> looking…
[14:44] <jarib> also slide 27 is telling
[14:44] <jarib> although the c# side is mostly complete as well now
[14:45] <jarib> alan_baird: there’s not really a “core” – webdriver speaks to each browser through the mechanism that fits that particular browser the best
[14:45] <jarib> so for firefox and chrome it’s through their extension system
[14:45] <jarib> for IE it’s C++
[14:46] <jarib> for opera (when it’s released) it’s using their scope protocol (which is also used by their built-in JS debugger)
[14:46] <jarib> etc.
[14:48] <alan_baird> seems like this webdriver.h is kind of at the core of all of this?
[14:48] <jarib> only for IE
[14:48] <alan_baird> ok
[14:49] <jarib> for FF, there’s a firefox extension, for example
[14:49] <alan_baird> so, when you wrote selenium-webdriver, you didn’t have to worry about all of the different browsers though did you?
[14:49] <alan_baird> (cause, that’s what webdriver’s supposed to do right?)
[14:50] <jarib> alan_baird: nope, i had to worry about them
[14:51] <alan_baird> hmm
[14:51] <alan_baird> well, how did having webdriver make things easier?
[14:52] <jarib> before i started, they had code that would bridge java->firefox extension, java->C++ IE driver, java->chrome extension etc.
[14:52] <alan_baird> (btw – I’m typing this in the middle of an ice storm, so if I suddenly disappear and don’t come back it’s probably cause the power went out)
[14:52] <jarib> so i basically ported the java parts to ruby
[14:52] <jarib> so now you also have ruby->firefox extension, ruby->C++ etc
[14:53] <alan_baird> ic
[14:53] <alan_baird> and that’s what selenium-webdriver is right?
[14:53] <jarib> it made it easier since i could reuse those browser-specific parts
[14:53] <jarib> yes
[14:54] <alan_baird> so, i looked at some of the examples in selenium-webdriver, would it be correct to say that that gem’s api follows selenium’s existing api?
[14:54] <jarib> how the “language bindings” talk to the browser still differs somewhat from browser to browser
[14:54] <jarib> alan_baird: it’s more correct to say the webdriver API
[14:54] <alan_baird> ok
[14:54] <jarib> although “webdriver API” =~ “selenium 2 api”
[14:54] <alan_baird> got it
[14:55] <jarib> however “webdriver API” != “selenium 1 api”
[14:55] <jarib> most people associate “selenium” with the selenium 1 api
[14:55] <alan_baird> cool…ok now how does webdriver remote come into the picture
[14:55] <alan_baird> is it required?
[14:55] <alan_baird> why would you use it?
[14:56] <jarib> the remote is basically two parts: a java web server, and a client driver
[14:57] <jarib> the server will accept commands like “click”, “findElement” (using a REST-like JSON-over-HTTP interface)
[14:57] <jarib> before they had java client->java server
[14:57] <jarib> now we also have a ruby client for that server, so ruby client->java server
[14:57] <jarib> does that make sense?
[14:58] <jarib> it’s not required, but it’s useful if you want to run your tests launch the browser on another machine
[14:58] <alan_baird> is that kind of the replacement for Selenium Grid?
[14:59] <jarib> say, if you’re developing on linux, you could easily run your tests on IE on windows, firefox on mac etc. using the remote driver
[14:59] <jarib> no, Selenium Grid is more than that
[14:59] <alan_baird> ok
[14:59] <jarib> but the webdriver remote stuff could be used to build a similar system
[14:59] <alan_baird> well, right now, I think I kind of have the same thign
[14:59] <alan_baird> i have a bunch of VMs that I execute tests on
[14:59] <alan_baird> and a system that tells the vms when to run the tests
[15:00] <alan_baird> but, it seems like the remote would be one computer telling the other computers what to do
[15:00] <alan_baird> as opposed to having it be independent the way I do it now
[15:00] <jarib> right – with the remote, you wouldn’t need to distribute your test scripts – each command to the browser would go over the network
[15:00] <jarib> so it’s a long-running server process
[15:01] <alan_baird> thats pretty nifty
[15:01] <alan_baird> is that the main way people would use that kind of feature for?
[15:02] <jarib> yeah – also makes it easier to test on various combinations of browsers/platforms
[15:03] <alan_baird> i’m just noticing the slide that says Webdriver has a “lovely API”, but apparently we didn’t consider it lovely enough so we made watir-webdriver
[15:03] <alan_baird>
[15:03] <jarib> haha
[15:04] <jarib> well, compare it to the selenium api
[15:04] <alan_baird> i guess that’s mainly so people could backport their watir tests without a major rewrite
[15:04] <jarib> yeah, for my part it’s mainly because we have a lot invested in the watir api
[15:04] <alan_baird> right
[15:04] <alan_baird> same here
[15:04] <alan_baird>
[15:05] <alan_baird> ok, well thank you very much for letting me bug you
[15:05] <jarib> if i were starting from scratch with experienced developers, i’d probably use the webdriver api directly
[15:05] <jarib> no problem
[15:05] <alan_baird> i’m going to forward this conversation to zeljko
[15:05] <jarib> yep
[15:05] <jarib> do that
[15:05] <alan_baird> maybe we might do a little follow up

On Windows, install it with

gem install watir-webdriver

and use it with

require "rubygems" # optional
require "watir-webdriver"
browser = Watir::Browser.new(:firefox)

Supported browsers are Internet Explorer (:ie, :internet_explorer), Firefox (:ff, :firefox), Chrome (:chrome) and RemoteWebDriver Server (:remote).

Update 1: as Steve suggested, I have tried it on RubyInstaller.

Install RubyInstaller, DevKit and all required gems and it just works!

gem install watir-webdriver
gem install win32-process

Update 2: It works on Mac.

My Mac came with Ruby and RubyGems installed, so it was just:

sudo gem install watir-webdriver

Update 3: It works on Ubuntu Linux.

My Ubuntu did not have Ruby and RubyGems installed.

Install Ruby with:

sudo apt-get install ruby-full

You can install RubyGems with:

sudo apt-get install rubygems

but Jari said it would be better to install it from source. Downland the latest RubyGems tgz or zip file (rubygems-1.3.5.tgz and rubygems-1.3.5.zip at the moment), extract it, open Terminal in extracted folder and run:

sudo ruby setup.rb

Install watir-webdriver:

sudo gem1.8 install watir-webdriver

Update 4: watir-webdriver is no longer prerelase gem, so installation is simpler.

This blog post is update of my recent Ruby Mail on CRuby, JRuby and IronRuby post. Mikel and Jimmy have commented on the post saying I did a poor job, and I would agree. I decided to do a better job this time. Please let me know if measurements can be further improved.

So, I have an e-mail file called 1.eml:

Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:37:34 Central European Standard Time
From: from@test.com
To: to@test.com
Message-ID: <4b336e9e762a0_a1014263a4689d3@2003-ie7.mail>
Subject: This is a test email
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="US-ASCII";
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Some text for mail body

The First Try

This is the test from the first post. (RubyInstaller was not included in the first post.) It is included here so all code and numbers are at the same page, I guess it is easier to compare that way. Read the file, display subject and total time elapsed (in seconds).

time = Time.now
require "rubygems"
require "mail"
mail = Mail.read("1.eml")
puts mail.subject.to_s
puts Time.now - time

Executed the script three times for each Ruby implementation. RubyInstaller the fastest, CRuby and JRuby were similar in speed, IronRuby was way slower.

The Second Try

Since both Mikel and Jimmy said require could take the majority of the time, and I was not really interested in measuring that, I excluded it from the measurement.

require "rubygems"
require "mail"

time = Time.now
mail = Mail.read("1.eml")
puts mail.subject.to_s
puts Time.now - time

Times were way shorter. RubyInstaller the fastest (can not get much faster that 0.0 seconds), CRuby and JRuby in the same order of magnitude, IronRuby order of magnitude slower. JRuby has surprisingly the same numbers every time.

Benchmark

Mikel and Jimmy have suggested that I should use benchmark.rb, so I took a look. I have slightly modified the script. This time the file was read 1000 times.

require "rubygems"
require "mail"
require "benchmark"

Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report { 1000.times do; puts Mail.read("1.eml").subject.to_s; end }
end

This measurement said JRuby was the fastest, followed closely by RubyInstaller and CRuby, IronRuby again order of magnitude slower.

Environment

Tests were run in VMware Fusion 2.0.6 virtual machine, 512 MB RAM, Microsoft Windows Sever 2003 R2 (Standard Edition, Service pack 2).
Host machine is MacBook Pro, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.6.2, 4 GB RAM.

>ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]

>jruby -v
jruby 1.4.0 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 174) (2009-11-02 69fbfa3) (Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.6.0_10) [x86-java]

>ir -v
IronRuby 0.9.3.0 on .NET 2.0.0.0

>ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2009-08-04 patchlevel 383) [i386-mingw32]

Mail version 1.3.4 on all platforms.

sudo port install webalizer