Ruby & Watir in Five Minutes

I have decided it was time to automate some of our web tests for a variety of reasons. If I have to convince you why to automate then your reading the wrong blog. I have choosen to use Watir (Pronounced Water). Watir is a free open source Ruby Gem.

I found getting Ruby and Watir up and running to be a fairly smooth process; however, some of the documentation on line wasn't 100% accurate. My goal is to give you the info to get up and running as quickly as possible. The information in this post applies only to Windows. 

Step 1 - Installing Ruby

1. Install Ruby - I have had errors using the 1.9.X branch, things run much smoother with 1.8.7

Step 2 - Installing Watir as a Ruby Gem

1. Open your favorite command prompt, and make sure you have the latest version of Ruby Gem's:
   

   gem update --system

2. Install watir using:
   

   gem install watir

3. If you want to use firefox you'll need to install this extension for Firefox 3.6

Step 3 - Your First Test Case


The directions at watir's site are very good for creating your first test case. The one important detail is before the step where you should enter require 'watir' you need to do require 'gemsystem'.

Long time no post

It's been a very long time since I published something here. So what have I been doing? Over the last year, I have found all my time consumed, between three things, Family, Work and Facebook. I simply never had the time to write any more posts. This year I am going to make more time. How can I do that?

Well since I don't want to give up any time with my family, and I can't give up any time spent on the job, that leaves, facebook. I have blocked my access to 90% of the games that used to drain my time, and removed almost all of the non-friends friends I had. Now it's time to get my priorities aligned up right again.

Although I can't stop working, I have decided to work smarter. There are so many better ways to do the things I have been doing. I am tired of using the all the standard excuses. To that end I have started down the path of automating the testing of our web application. The application has really stabilized itself over the last year as far as functionality in various key areas, that a couple of well thought out automated test scripts should help reduce the amount of time, and effort we spend testing, and reduce the amount of bugs.

I have just started exploring Watir and hope to have some posts on it soon.