Functional Testing with Tellurium

I have recently discovered a new toolset for functional testing. Its called Tellurium and it runs on top of Selenium. Tellurium brings some cutting edge technologies to the table:

• It's built fully in Groovy and takes advantage of DSLs, closures and other syntax sugar, while letting you code in java if you prefer.
  
• It supports JUnit and TestNG unit testing frameworks
• Instead of relying on xpath to describe the UI, it uses a UI mapping DSL
• Comes with a firefox plugin for generating UI modules called TrUMP
  

Even though Tellurium is a fairly young project, it has very good support on the project forums. I have requested a few bug fixes and patches, and had the fixes committed within days. Anyway, the biggest advantage in using Tellurium vs Selenium is the UI mapping. Let's look at what a simple Selenium script would look like versus that same script written for Tellurium.

In this simple script we will click around the Tellurium project page. This is the Selenium version:

<br />public class NewTest extends SeleneseTestCase {<br /> public void setUp() throws Exception {<br /> setUp("http://code.google.com/", "*chrome");<br /> }<br /> public void testTelluriumProjectPage() throws Exception {<br /> selenium.open("/p/aost/");<br /> selenium.click("link=Downloads");<br /> selenium.waitForPageToLoad("30000");<br /> selenium.click("link=Wiki");<br /> selenium.waitForPageToLoad("30000");<br /> selenium.click("link=Issues");<br /> selenium.waitForPageToLoad("30000");<br /> selenium.click("link=Source");<br /> selenium.waitForPageToLoad("30000");<br /> <br /> }<br /> public void testSearchProject() throws Exception {<br /> selenium.click("link=Project Home");<br /> selenium.waitForPageToLoad("30000");<br /> selenium.type("q", "tellurium");<br /> selenium.click("projectsearch");<br /> selenium.waitForPageToLoad("30000");<br /><br /> }<br />}<br />

And now, the same test in Tellurium. Tellurium uses UI modules to describe the UI in a class that is separate from the test. Here is the UI module DSL:

<br />class TelluriumProjectPage extends DslContext{<br /><br /> public void defineUi() {<br /> //define the menu<br /> //It is fine to use Container to abstract Table if you have special table<br /> ui.Container(uid: "menu", clocator: [tag: "table", id: "mt", trailer: "/tbody/tr/th"], group: "true"){<br /> //since the actual text is Project Home, we can useString partial match here. Note "%%" stands for partial match<br /> UrlLink(uid: "project_home", clocator: [text: "%%Home"])<br /> UrlLink(uid: "downloads", clocator: [text: "Downloads"])<br /> UrlLink(uid: "wiki", clocator: [text: "Wiki"])<br /> UrlLink(uid: "issues", clocator: [text: "Issues"])<br /> UrlLink(uid: "source", clocator: [text: "Source"])<br /> }<br /><br /> //define the search module, which includes an input box, two search buttons<br /> ui.Form(uid: "search", clocator: [:], group: "true"){<br /> InputBox(uid: "searchbox", clocator: [name: "q"])<br /> SubmitButton(uid: "search_project_button", clocator: [value: "Search Projects"])<br /> SubmitButton(uid: "search_web_button", clocator: [value: "Search the Web"])<br /> }<br /> }<br /><br /> def clickProjectHome(){<br /> click "menu.project_home"<br /> waitForPageToLoad 30000<br /> }<br /><br /> def clickDownloads(){<br /> click "menu.downloads"<br /> waitForPageToLoad 30000<br /> }<br /><br /> def clickWiki(){<br /> click "menu.wiki"<br /> waitForPageToLoad 30000<br /> }<br /><br /> def clickIssues(){<br /> click "menu.issues"<br /> waitForPageToLoad 30000<br /> }<br /><br /> def clickSource(){<br /> click "menu.source"<br /> waitForPageToLoad 30000<br /> <br /> def searchProject(String input){<br /> type "search.searchbox", input<br /> click "search.search_project_button"<br /> waitForPageToLoad 30000<br /> }<br /><br />}<br />}<br />

And this is the Tellurium TestNG test case that uses the above module:

<br />public class TelluriumProjectPageTestNGTestCase extends TelluriumTestNGTestCase{<br /> private static TelluriumProjectPage app;<br /><br /> @BeforeClass<br /> public static void initUi() {<br /> app = new TelluriumProjectPage();<br /> app.defineUi();<br /> }<br /><br /> @BeforeMethod<br /> public void setUpForTest(){<br /> connectUrl("http://code.google.com/p/aost/");<br /> }<br /><br /> @Test<br /> public void testTelluriumProjectPage(){<br /> app.clickDownloads();<br /> app.clickWiki();<br /> app.clickIssues();<br /> app.clickSource();<br /> }<br /> @Test<br /> public void testSearchProject(){<br /> app.clickProjectHome();<br /> app.searchProject("tellurium");<br /> }<br />}<br />


As you can see, the code looks very different. You will notice that the Selenium test is much shorter, but does not re-use UI elements like the Tellurium test does. Tellurium's UI mapping maps UI elements to very short element ids, which support hierarchical nesting, which can greatly simplify large tests.
Another big and obvious advantage to UI mapping is that if your underlying html changes, you would only need to modify the UI mapping DSL, and not need to worry about the actual tests. This is where Tellurium really shines for me.
Modifing the UI maps is really simple using the TrUMP Firefox plugin. TrUMP lets you point and click on the page, and builds out the nested UI module DSL for you.

What you will need in order to use Tellurium for your project

• Tellurium 0.5.0 jar from the project downloads page
• Groovy 1.6
  
• Java 1.5
• TestNG or jUnit
• A read through the Tellurium Tutorial
• Install the Trump firefox plugin
  

Useful resources for working with Tellurium and TrUMP firefox plugin
The best place to go to find support is the tellurium user group. Questions are answered very fast, and it is the main reason I was able to integrate Tellurium into my functional testing strategy at work.

Also, the Tellurium team has created two videos to help you get started with the project:
Tellurium Demo Video Part I: Tellurium project and TrUMP IDE
Tellurium Demo Video Part II: Create Tellurium Test cases