On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 12:29 PM Harald Sitter <sit...@kde.org> wrote: > > Servus, > > A while ago I prototyped a "new" approach to UI testing and I'm > wondering if there's general interest in doing more Plasma testing > using it. I'm able to invest time in polishing the experience for us. > > Very rough prototype: https://invent.kde.org/sitter/selenium-webdriver-at-spi > > The testing is run through the accessibility API we have on Linux > https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Accessibility/AT-SPI2/ as well as the > testing API selenium https://www.selenium.dev/ respectively the more > specific appium https://appium.io/ > > Architecturally appium is an extension to selenium and selenium is a > client-server system where the client is the test and the server is a > so called webdriver. Webdriver is a standardized well-defined API of > various UI interactions https://www.w3.org/TR/webdriver/ and we'd > implement one based on the a11y APIs (the feature sets match fairly > well). > > Since selenium has wide spread use across the industry we get to use > excellent tooling on the client without any extra work from us. And > because it is so wide spread the stuff is generally very well > maintained. All we need to maintain is the webdriver that interacts > with the a11y API. > > The way this type of testing works is by UI interaction and state > validation. There is a kcalc test available in the prototype repo [1] > - the test operates the various UI elements to perform a calculation > and then checks that the output UI element contains the expected > value. > > A simple plasma test might open kickoff, and launch one of the > favorites, then validate that indeed a new window has opened. > > Since all this is driven by the a11y API there is the additional > advantage of making us notice a11y problems and deal with them, > resulting in bettery a11y support in the long run. Two birds, one > stone! > > What do you reckon? > > [1] > https://invent.kde.org/sitter/selenium-webdriver-at-spi/-/blob/91486b50995ade23c6b03a54f77347c263c2f03a/calculatortest.py > > HS
It looks super interesting, always refreshing to see a plan to kill such two very important birds. :) Best, Aleix
