Integration testing with White [closed]

Question

Has anyone got experience with the white framework?

www.codeplex.com/white ?

I'm thinking about using it for the next project for basic smoke tests of our windows client. I'd like some advice on articles or your own experiences. Thanks.

Sargeant

Answer 1

I recently used white to build a few (20+) UI tests for a fairly complex WinForms app with plenty of UserControls, dynamically created and 3rd-party controls.

Here are my impressions:

• Very easy and intuitive to work with.
• Little or no quality issues.
• It's a young project so there are some missing features, but they've got the basics covered.
• Occasionally, if a control didn't have a known AutomationID, I was forced to use keystrokes to navigate to and manipulate a control ("tab, tab, enter" for example) which was kind of a bummer, but still very easy to do in white. This usually only happened with 3rd-party or dynamically generated controls.
• White's recorder is helpful (and will actually generate code for you) but does often get confused by complicated or unusual controls. For that reason I'd recommend that you...
• ...keep UISpy nearby so you can see the AutomationID of the controls you're working with.
• And finally, if you're like me, you're hoping to set up some automated tests. This can be tricky since an automated test will usually be run by a CI tool such as CruiseControl which runs as a Windows service, which therefore has no active graphical environment (Windows session)...which white requires. The suggested way around this is to use a virtual machine. This is where I lost steam, as my tool chain had just grown too large for my purposes: CruiseControl->NAnt->NUnit->white + virtual machine.

Anyway, hope that's useful.

Same

I'd also add that the documentation is extremely poor at the moment, so it's not as easy as it could be. Hopefully it'll end up being documented here ;) – Impertinent

Regarding running the tests on the build server, an option I have used is to use windows auto-logon (support.microsoft.com/kb/315231) feature, so that the server is running a graphical windows session. – Lilias

Answer 2

I evaluated it recently, but had to reject it because it would not support the third party controls (janus grid) we were using.

Bootlick

did other testing tools work with the janus grid? – Sonya

We recently started using Ranorex and it seems to work great. ranorex.com – Bootlick