Eileen Xie, Head of #sfse lightning takls

1. APIs: A Better Alternative
to Page Objects
Eileen Xie
Head of Quality at PBworks
#sfse 8/23/11

2. Page Objects

3. What are they trying to
solve?

4. What are they trying to
solve?
• repetition
• maintenance
• readability

5. How well do they solve
them?

6. How well do they solve
them?
• repetition: poorly
• maintenance: poorly
• readability: poorly

7. Repetition

8. Repetition
• still too many steps
• some steps repeated over and over
homePage = HomePage.load();
loginPage = homePage.getLoginLink().click();
welcomePage = loginPage.login();
newTaskPage = welcomePage.getNewTaskLink().click();
newTaskPage.getTaskNameField().type(“Learn Selenium”);

9. Maintenance

10. Maintenance
• huge overhead
• QA needs to maintain and fix
• still dependent on page workflow
• still dependent on page structure/layout

11. Readability

12. Readability
• see repetition

13. What can we do
instead?

14. What can we do
instead?
• APIs!

15. APIs

16. What do they look like?

17. What do they look like?
createNetwork();
createNetworkWorkspace();
addNetworkUser();

18. What do they look like
under the hood?

19. What do they look like
under the hood?
function createNetworkFolder(name) {
curl(“http://pbworks.com/api_v2/op/
CreateNetworkFolder/name/” + name);
}

20. What?
• Where’s all the code?
• Why would we do this?
• How do the API calls get tested?
• How do we start?
• Wait a minute...

21. Where’s all the code?

22. Where’s all the code?
• in the product!
• really.

23. Why would we do this?

24. Why would we do this?
• less repetition
• makes tests clearer
• maintained by developers
• easier to read
• makes software more testable
• test execution speed
• better than straight SQL insertions

25. How do the API calls
get tested?

26. How do the API calls
get tested?
• separate tests!
• one test does the API stuff through the UI
dashboardPage.getNewTaskLink().click();
newTaskPage.getTaskNameField().type(“Learn Selenium”);
newTaskPage.getTaskDueDateField().type(“8/31/11”);
• every other test calls the API
createTask();

27. How do we start?

28. How do we start?
• figure out what the functions are
• talk to your devs!
• start with new functionality
• greenfield projects

29. Wait a minute...

30. Wait a minute...
• requires a ton of cooperation from devs
• huge upfront cost
• doesn’t actually replace page objects

31. Summary
• APIs are awesome
• ...and a pain in the ass to start using
• complimentary to page objects

32. More Info
• Our API: http://secure.pbworks.com/api_v2/
• Me: eileen.xie@pbworks.com