Java Based GUI Automation (Not limited to Java based GUI like Swing) [closed]

Question

Is there any open source tool/framework that is written in Java that can be used to automate all Windows applications (not like Abbot or FEST which automates Java based GUI Apps).

I have heard about WHITE which is kind of like for .Net Languages. Is there a Java based alternative or a framework in Java that can use WHITE or UIAutomation Framework (through JNI or something)?

There seems to be many Java based web automation and testing tools like Selenium, Sahi etc. but for GUI Automation, I found only jWinAuto which is a wrapper around AutoItX.

Is Java not capable for GUI Automation? Is there something beyond the Java Robot API?

Pasty

Answer 1

Java does not inherently support cross platform native GUI automation (where you need to find and understand native components). By that I mean a way of doing it "write once run everywhere" beyond the obvious very minimal API of Robot.

Could such a project be done in Java? I'm sure, but there would be a lot of JNI code involved to the point where you would wonder what Java brings to the table.

Trichromatic

There are enterprise solutions to this problem, which means it's obviously doable. I added a bounty because I'm interested in finding out what alternatives exist in Java. – Parve

I didn't say it wasn't doable, I just said it isn't standard Java and questioned why an open source project would find it something worth doing specifically in Java. The question was was there any open source tools. – Trichromatic

Maybe they're using the same tools my company is and wanted to customize an alternative without rewriting scripts? – Parve

@Yamikuronue, that would only be reasonable if the tool itself had an open source version, or if an open source project specifically targeted the API of your tool. – Trichromatic

Its not about capabilities. it shows that there isn't any necessity for this kind of tool. The necessity is towards web automation. – Hagioscope

@Yishai: Thanks for your answer. I came to a similar conclusion after doing some research. It is possible but as you said there will be much JNI involved. – Pasty

@dilip: I am not sure if there is no necessity at all for such a tool. Actually Web Automation Tools are very abundant in the open source space but the same is not true for stand-alone apps. There are tools like WHITE, jwinauto,pywinauto and quite a few in ruby like bewildr, guia etc. Ofcourse all these are mostly windows based, maybe that the problem :D. – Pasty

I think, Selenium WebDriver is fit for UI testing. – Dusty