Integration Tests for SMX4 with Python

Integration tests and unit tests are important for project quality. Unit tests usually are well suited for developer to verify his changes in runtime. On the other hand, integration tests, are for target user to verify that project’s features in the way he interacts with project, work properly. In this article, I will show how to automate integration tests for ServiceMix 4 using SoapUI testrunner and a simple python script.
The idea is to spawn ServiceMix 4 Karaf console and interact with it using python expect library. During this interaction, SoapUI testrunner script is invoked in order to run SoapUI tests.
First, we need to grab SMX4_DIR and SOAPUI_DIR environment variables in our script, like this:

SMX4_DIR=os.getenv("SMX4_DIR")
SOAPUI_DIR=os.getenv("SOAPUI_DIR")

 
This way, we can invoke later our script using following shell command:

SMX4_DIR=/some/path SOAPUI_DIR=/some/other/path ./our-python-script

 
Then, we need to spawn ServiceMix 4 console by using python expect library:

import pexpect
import time
import sys
child = pexpect.spawn("bin/servicemix")
child.logfile = sys.stdout
child.expect("karaf.*>")
time.sleep(3)

 
Here, we set logfile to stdout in order to see our automated interaction with ServiceMix console. Then we need to wait for ServiceMix console command prompt, which would mean console is ready. Additionally, we need to wait a few seconds to avoid problems with running commands too early (which is a kind of small bug in ServiceMix). Then, we can install our features, which we want to test. This example starts Apache HISE test bundle, which loads also Apache HISE engine from dependencies.

child.sendline("features:addUrl mvn:org.apache.hise/hise-karaf/0.3.0-SNAPSHOT/xml/features");
child.expect("karaf.*>")
child.sendline("features:install hise-h2-test-example-osgi")
child.expect("karaf.*>")

 
Next, we need to wait until the feature is properly started. ServiceMix 4 OSGi container initializes bundles in background, so it’s not enough to wait for command prompt to have it started (there doesn’t seem to exist a “wait-until-started” console command).So we grep in a loop over installed bundles and see if status is started. In this example, we do 30 retries every second and fail our integration test script after this period, by raising exception.

child.sendline("features:addUrl mvn:org.apache.hise/hise-karaf/0.3.0-SNAPSHOT/xml/features");
rep=0
while True:
    child.sendline("osgi:list|grep -i hise-test-example-osgi")
    l=child.readline()
    l=child.readline()
    if re.match(".*Started", l) != None:
        break
    time.sleep(1)
    child.expect("karaf.*>")
    rep=rep+1
    if rep>30:
        raise Exception("Bundle not installed")

 
Next, we need to run SoapUI testrunner in order to execute test cases. We need to implement syscall method in order to fail integration tests if SoapUI testrunner completes with fault (non-zero exit code).

import os
def syscall(c):
    if os.system(c) != 0:
        raise Exception("Sys call failed: " + c)

syscall(SOAPUI_DIR + “/bin/testrunner.sh -f results hise-soapui-project.xml”)
At the end, we can exit gracefully from ServiceMix console by using shutdown command, like this:

child.sendline("shutdown")

 

And that’s it. Full code of integration test script is available in Apache HISE sources, from Apache repository http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/hise/trunk/itest/itest.

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CasperJS for Java developers

Why CasperJS

Being a Java developer is kinda hard these days. Java may not be dead yet, but when keeping in sync with all the hipster JavaScript frameworks could make us feel a bit outside the playground. It’s even hard to list JavaScript frameworks with latest releases on one website.

In my current project, we are using AngularJS. It’a a nice abstraction of MV* pattern in frontend layer of any web application (we use Grails underneath). Here is a nice article with an 8-point Win List of Angular way of handling AJAX calls and updating the view. So it’s not only a funny new framework but a truly helper of keeping your code clean and neat.

But there is also another area when you can put helpful JS framework in place of plan-old-java one - functional tests. Especially when you are dealing with one page app with lots of asynchronous REST/JSON communication.

Selenium and Geb

In Java/JVM project the typical is to use Selenium with some wrapper like Geb. So you start your project, setup your CI-functional testing pipeline and… after 1 month of coding your tests stop working and being maintainable. The frameworks itselves are not bad, but the typical setup is so heavy and has so many points of failure that keeping it working in a real life project is really hard.

Here is my list of common myths about Selenium: * It allows you to record test scripts via handy GUI - maybe some static request/response sites. In modern web applications with asynchronous REST/JSON communication your tests must contain a lot of “waitFor” statements and you cannot automate where these should be included. * It allows you to test your web app against many browsers - don’t try to automate IE tests! You have to manually open your app in IE to see how it actually bahaves! * It integrates well with continuous integration servers like Jenkins - you have to setup Selenium Grid on server with X installed to run tests on Chrome or Firefox and a Windows server for IE. And the headless HtmlUnit driver lacks a lot of JS support.

So I decided to try something different and introduce a bit of JavaScript tooling in our project by using CasperJS.

Introduction

CasperJS is simple but powerful navigation scripting & testing utility for PhantomJS - scritable headless WebKit (which is an rendering engine used by Safari and Chrome). In short - CasperJS allows you to navigate and make assertions about web pages as they’d been rendered in Google Chrome. It is enough for me to automate the functional tests of my application.

If you want a gentle introduction to the world of CasperJS I suggest you to read: * Official website, especially installation guide and API * Introductionary article from CasperJS creator Nicolas Perriault * Highlevel testing with CasperJS by Kevin van Zonneveld * grails-angular-scaffolding plugin by Rob Fletcher with some working CasperJS tests

Full example

I run my test suite via following script:

casperjs test --direct --log-level=debug --testhost=localhost:8080 --includes=test/casper/includes/casper-angular.coffee,test/casper/includes/pages.coffee test/casper/specs/

casper-angular.coffe

casper.test.on "fail", (failure) ->
    casper.capture(screenshot)

testhost   = casper.cli.get "testhost"
screenshot = 'test-fail.png'

casper
    .log("Using testhost: #{testhost}", "info")
    .log("Using screenshot: #{screenshot}", "info")

casper.waitUntilVisible = (selector, message, callback) ->
    @waitFor ->
        @visible selector
    , callback, (timeout) ->
        @log("Selector [#{selector}] not visible, failing")
        withParentSelector selector, (parent) ->
            casper.log("Output of parent selector [#{parent}]")
            casper.debugHTML(parent)
        @echo message, "RED_BAR"
        @capture(screenshot)
        @test.fail(f("Wait timeout occured (%dms)", timeout))

withParentSelector = (selector, callback) ->
    if selector.lastIndexOf(" ") > 0
       parent = selector[0..selector.lastIndexOf(" ")-1]
       callback(parent)

Sample pages.coffee:

x = require('casper').selectXPath

class EditDocumentPage

    assertAt: ->
        casper.test.assertSelectorExists("div.customerAccountInfo", 'at EditDocumentPage')

    templatesTreeFirstCategory: 'ul.tree li label'
    templatesTreeFirstTemplate: 'ul.tree li a'
    closePreview: '.closePreview a'
    smallPreview: '.smallPreviewContent img'
    bigPreview: 'img.previewImage'
    confirmDelete: x("//div[@class='modal-footer']/a[1]")

casper.editDocument = new EditDocumentPage()

End a test script:

testhost = casper.cli.get "testhost" or 'localhost:8080'

casper.start "http://#{testhost}/app", ->
    @test.assertHttpStatus 302
    @test.assertUrlMatch /\/fakeLogin/, 'auto login'
    @test.assert @visible('input#Create'), 'mock login button'
    @click 'input#Create'

casper.then ->
    @test.assertUrlMatch /document#\/edit/, 'new document'
    @editDocument.assertAt()
    @waitUntilVisible @editDocument.templatesTreeFirstCategory, 'template categories not visible', ->
        @click @editDocument.templatesTreeFirstCategory
        @waitUntilVisible @editDocument.templatesTreeFirstTemplate, 'template not visible', ->
            @click @editDocument.templatesTreeFirstTemplate

casper.then ->
    @waitUntilVisible @editDocument.smallPreview, 'small preview not visible', ->
        # could be dblclick / whatever
        @mouseEvent('click', @editDocument.smallPreview)

casper.then ->
    @waitUntilVisible @editDocument.bigPreview, 'big preview should be visible', ->
        @test.assertEvalEquals ->
            $('.pageCounter').text()
        , '1/1', 'page counter should be visible'
        @click @editDocument.closePreview

casper.then ->
    @click 'button.cancel'
    @waitUntilVisible '.modal-footer', 'delete confirmation not visible', ->
        @click @editDocument.confirmDelete

casper.run ->
    @test.done()

Here is a list of CasperJS features/caveats used here:

  • Using CoffeeScript is a huge win for your test code to look neat
  • When using casper test command, beware of different (than above articles) logging setup. You can pass --direct --log-level=debug from commandline for best results. Logging is essential here since Phantom often exists without any error and you do want to know what just happened.
  • Extract your helper code into separate files and include them by using --includes switch.
  • When passing server URL as a commandline switch remember that in CoffeeScript variables are not visible between multiple source files (unless getting them via window object)
  • It’s good to override standard waitUntilVisible with capting a screenshot and making a proper log statement. In my version I also look for a parent selector and debugHTML the content of it - great for debugging what is actually rendered by the browser.
  • Selenium and Geb have a nice concept of Page Objects - an abstract models of pages rendered by your application. Using CoffeeScript you can write your own classes, bind selectors to properties and use then in your code script. Assigning the objects to casper instance will end up with quite nice syntax like @editDocument.assertAt().
  • There is some issue with CSS :first and :last selectors. I cannot get them working (but maybe I’m doing something wrong?). But in CasperJS you can also use XPath selectors which are fine for matching n-th child of some element (x("//div[@class='modal-footer']/a[1]")).
    Update: :first and :last are not CSS3 selectors, but JQuery ones. Here is a list of CSS3 selectors, all of these are supported by CasperJS. So you can use nth-child(1) is this case. Thanks Andy and Nicolas for the comments!

Working with CasperJS can lead you to a few hour stall, but after getting things working you have a new, cool tool in your box!