One thing I like to do is to create wrappers that simplify usage of complex APIs. I also like wrappers that allow me to add functionality to an API. And when I can use a wrapper to get rid of duplicate code, I’m down right ecstatic.

Well today I’d like to highlight a little wrapper magic that helps simplify testing HTML tables. The approach isn’t new, but it was introduced in TestPipe by a junior developer with no prior test automation experience (very smart guy).

First some explanation before code as it may be a little hard to understand. TestPipe actually provides a wrapper around Selenium Web Driver. This includes wrappers around the Driver, SearchContext, and Elements. TestPipe has a BaseControl that is basically a wrapper around WebDriver’s IWebElement. This not only allows us to bend WebDriver to our will, the biggest benefit, but it also gives us the ability to swap browser drivers without changing our test code. So, we could opt to use WatiN or some custom System.Net and helpers and not have to do much, if anything, in terms of adjusting our test code. (Side Note: this isn’t a common use case, almost as useless as wrapping the database just so you can change the database later…doesn’t happen often, if ever, but its nice that its there just in case)

GridControl

Like I said, we have a BaseControl. To provide some nice custom functionality for working with tables we will extend BaseControl.

public class GridControl : BaseControl
{
 public GridControl(IBrowser browser)
   : base(browser, null, null)
 {
 }
 //...Grid methods
}

Breaking this down, we create a new class, GridControl, that inherits BaseControl. In the constructor we inject an IBrowser, which is the interface implemented by our WebDriver wrapper. So, outside of TestPipe, this would be like injecting IWebDriver. The BaseControl handles state for Driver and exposes it to our GridControl class through a public property. This same concept can be used to wrap text boxes, drop down lists, radio button…you get the idea.

GetCell

I won’t show all of the code, but it’s on GitHub for your viewing pleasure. Instead, I will break down a method that provide some functionality to help finding cells in tables. GetCell, this method provides a simple way to get any cell in a table by the row and column.

public IControl GetCell(int row, int column)
{
 StringBuilder xpathCell = new StringBuilder();
 xpathCell.Append("//*[@id='");
 xpathCell.Append(this.SelectId.ToString());
 xpathCell.Append("']/tbody/tr[");
 xpathCell.Append(row);
 xpathCell.Append("]/td[");
 xpathCell.Append(column);
 xpathCell.Append("]");
 Select selector = new Select(FindByEnum.XPath, xpathCell.ToString());
 IControl control = this.Find(selector);
 return control;
}

This isn’t the actual TestPipe code, but enough to get the gist of how this is handled in TestPipe. We are building up an XPath query to find the tr at the specified row index and the td at the specified column index. Then we pass the XPath to a Selector class that is used in the Find method to return an IControl. IControl is the interface for the wrapper around WebDriver’s IWebElement. The Find method uses our wrapper around WebDrivers ISearchContext to find the element…who’s on first?

One problem with this approach is the string “/tbody/tr”. What if your table doesn’t have a tbody? Exactly, it won’t find the cell. This bug was found by another junior developer that recently joined the project, another very smart guy. Anyway, this is a problem we are solving as we speak and it looks like we will default to “/tr” and allow for injection of a different structure like “/tbody/tr” as a method argument. Alternatively, we could search for “/tr” then if not found search for “/tbody/tr”. We may do both search for the 2 structures and allow injection. These solutions are pretty messy, but it’s better than having to write this code every time you want to find a table cell. The point is we are encapsulating this messy code so we don’t have to look at it and getting a cell is as simple as passing the row and column we want to get from the table.

Usage in Tests

In our page object class we could use this by assigning GridControl to a property that represents a table on our page. (If you aren’t using page objects in your automated browser tests, get with the times)

//In our Page Object class we have this property
public GridControl MyGrid
{
    get
    {
        return new GridControl(this.Browser);
    }
}

Then it is pretty easy to use it in tests.

//Here we use myPage, an instance of our Page Object,
//to access MyGrid to get the cell we want to test
string cell = myPage.MyGrid.GetCell(2,5).Text;
Assert.AreEqual("hello", cell);

Boom! A ton of evil duplicate code eradicated and some sweet functionality added on top of WebDriver.

Conclusion

The point here is that you should try to find ways to wrap complex APIs to find simpler uses of the API, cut down on duplication, and extend the functionality provided by the API. This is especially true in test automation where duplication causes maintenance nightmares.