public interface SmartClientCypress

Integrating Smart GWT with Cypress

Cypress is an automated testing platform that can be used to test web applications. Smart GWT supports a number of features to easily integrate with Cypress, making it extremely straightforward to start creating effective automated tests for Smart GWT applications.

For an overview of Automated Testing in Smart GWT, see the documentation here.

The Cypress website contains very helpful guides to walk you through how to install Cypress, how to run the Cypress application, and how to create tests. If you're new to Cypress, we'd recommend you start here. You should be able to rapidly learn how to install cypress and how to create and run e2e (end-to-end) tests.

Custom cypress commands for Smart GWT Applications

The Smart GWT SDK ships with a sample commands.js file, available under commands.js.

This file contains some custom commands which simplify interacting with a running Smart GWT application as cypress runs your tests. See below for more details.

Using locators to interact with Smart GWT User Interface components

The AutoTestLocator subsystem is used to reliably identify DOM elements generated within a Smart GWT application.

You have two options for obtaining locators from your app:

1.- The Developer Console.

Open the Developer Console and, in the first tab titled "Results", click on the link near the middle of the page, titled "Show AutoTest Locators." Now as you click on elements within the application, the locator for the element will be displayed in the Developer Console. Double-click the locator (or select and use Ctrl+C) to copy it to the clipboard.

2.- Via the AutoTest.installLocatorShortcut() script. After running the scriptlet to install the locator shortcut, you can simply click on the target element while holding down the appropriate modifier keys and the appropriate locator string will be copied to the clipboard.

Resolving locators back to DOM elements in Cypress

A stored locator string can be resolved back to a DOM element via AutoTest.getElement() or AutoTest.waitForElement(). Using waitForElement() is preferable as this will not resolve until any active, asynchronous operations within an application have completed.

The sample commands.js file includes a command "getSC" which uses waitForElement() to wait for any pending system actions, then resolve an AutoTestLocator to its target DOM element and yield it back. You can make use of this command in your test code as follows:

   cy.getSC(<locator>).click();

Cypress actions native scroll behavior

By default Cypress actions such as click can cause the target element to be scrolled on the page. See the scrollBehavior option described here.

In some cases Smart GWT components may redraw synchronously on scroll which may interfere with your Cypress test's execution. For example if a listGrid is incrementally rendering its records, a scroll may require a redraw to ensure the user doesn't see unrendered cells that were previously outside the viewport. If this happens while a Cypress click action is in progress, Cypress will throw an error as the target element will have been replaced in the DOM while the action was still in progress. Developers may avoid this problem by ensuring the target element is already scrolled into view, and specifying scrollBehavior:false on Cypress' click command options.

Scrolling Smart GWT components

In some cases a Cypress test may need to explicitly change the scroll position of a Smart GWT component.

For Smart GWT skins that use custom scrollbars, the Cypress scrollTo command may not see the component as a valid target for scrolling. For this reason the sample commands.js file includes a scrollSC() command. This command takes a locator plus target left and top position as arguments. Note that you can specify left and top as an explicit pixel position, or use a percentage string like "50%". For example, to scroll some component to its mid point vertically while leaving the horizontal scroll position unchanged you could invoke:

   cy.scrollSC(<locator>, null, "50%");

Interacting with Smart GWT FormItems

Smart GWT's SelectItem, ComboBoxItem and CheckboxItem are based on custom HTML rather than built-in browser controls, because this is required to provide advanced functionality such as multi-column dropdowns. Because of this, the check() and uncheck() functions for CheckboxItem and the select() function for SelectItem and ComboBoxItem are not applicable.

Instead, the "click()" function is the way to interact with these controls, for example:

       cy.visit('https://smartclient.com/smartclient-latest/showcase/?id=updateOperation')
 
       // Click to start editing the grid
       cy.getSC('//testRoot[]/child[index=0||length=1||Class=VStack||classIndex=0||classLength=1]' +
               '/member[index=1||length=4||Class=ListGrid||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/body/row[1]/col[2]'
       ).click()
 
       // Type a value into the 'description' item
       cy.getSC('//testRoot[]/child[index=0||length=1||Class=VStack||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/' +
               'member[index=2||length=4||Class=DynamicForm||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/item[name=description]/element'
       ).type('Glue Pelikan Roll-fix Refill Permanent #955')
 
       // Click the 'units' item to show the pickList
       cy.getSC('//testRoot[]/child[index=0||length=1||Class=VStack||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/' +
               'member[index=2||length=4||Class=DynamicForm||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/item[name=units]/textbox'
       ).click()
 
       // Click a value in the pickList drop down
       cy.getSC('//testRoot[]/child[index=0||length=1||Class=VStack||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/' + 
               'member[index=2||length=4||Class=DynamicForm||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/item[name=units]/pickList/body/row[3]/col[0]'
       ).click()
 
       // Click to toggle the value of the 'inStock' checkbox'
       cy.getSC('//testRoot[]/child[index=0||length=1||Class=VStack||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/' +
               'member[index=2||length=4||Class=DynamicForm||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/item[name=inStock]/valueicon'
       ).click()
 
       // Click the Save button
       cy.getSC('//testRoot[]/child[index=0||length=1||Class=VStack||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/' +
               member[title=Save]/'
       ).click()
 
       // Verify the value has been updated
       cy.getSC('//testRoot[]/child[index=0||length=1||Class=VStack||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/' +
               'member[index=1||length=4||Class=ListGrid||classIndex=0||classLength=1]/body/row[1]/col[2]'
       ).invoke('text').then((text) => { 
           expect(text.trim()).to.equal('Glue Pelikan Roll-fix Refill Permanent #955')
       })

Using force-click to dismiss click masks

In some cases you may need to dismiss a Smart GWT click-mask by clicking. Examples include certain styles of drop-down, grid editing interactions, etc. - that are dismissed via an outside-click. Cypress will reject attempts to send a click() to some element under the click-mask by default as the target element will be obscured by the click mask in the DOM, and so is not directly "visible" as far as Cypress is aware. You can handle this by specifying {force:true} on your click command.

For example if you have a multiple:true SelectItem, a clickMask is used to watch for the user clicking outside the SelectItem drop-down. To dismiss the drop-down from a Cypress test, we recommend sending a {force: true} click() command to some other element on the page:

      cy.getSC(<locator>).click({force: true})

In this case <locator> refers to the target component that we click on the app to dismiss the dropdown. Note that depending on how the application is configured, this click may dismiss the dropdown and prevent the click action from firing for the target that was actually clicked. You can handle this by invoking a second click to mimic the user interaction. For example:

      cy.getSC(<locator>).click({force: true}).click()

Waiting for Asynchronous application actions

Because the getSC() command uses AutoTest.waitForElement(), which will not resolve until all outstanding asynchronous system actions have completed, it is not usually necessary to write test code that explicitly waits for actions to complete (using cy.wait() calls, for example).
To put it another way: if an action in a test kicks off a Smart GWT DataSource operation and the next action is using getSC() to interact with another Smart GWT component, the test will automatically wait for the asynchronous operation from the first action to complete before proceeding with the second action.

This alone may not be sufficient to handle every asynchronous behavior in an application. In some cases you may want to explicitly wait for the Smart GWT framework to complete some action without having a subsequent getSC() call in your test. The AutoTest.waitForSystemDone() method can be used to handle this. The commands.js sample file includes a custom command "waitForSCDone" which wraps this method in a Cypress command.

To explicitly wait for all asynchronous Smart GWT actions to complete, call the method in your test code as follows:

   cy.waitForSCDone();

Additionally you may have asynchronous behaviors that are unrelated to Smart GWT interactions, such as network activity that does not go through the Smart GWT RPCManager, asynchronous rendering of third party widgets, etc. In these cases AutoTest.isSystemDone() may return true even though the application is not ready for further input.

The options parameter for getSC() can be used to change the waitStyle passed to AutoTest.waitForElement(). If you request "element" rather than "system", instead of relying on AutoTest.isSystemDone(), the framework will continue trying to resolve the locator to an element until the command times out. This gives you an easy way to instruct the test case to keep trying to resolve a locator even after AutoTest.isSystemDone() returns true.

Both waitForSCDone() and getSC() support being passed an explicit timeout on the options parameter. This governs how long the commands will wait for system quiescense / for the locator to be resolved. If no explicit timeout was specified, the default wait time for these commands is 30 seconds, but this can be customized by setting "scCommandTimeout" in your Cypress config.

Note that as long as waitStyle is set to "system", it is very rare for getSC() commands to time out as the application will wait for AutoTest.isSystemDone() and then attempt to resolve the locator. If it fails to resolve the locator to an element it will return null immediately rather than continue attempting to resolve the locator until the command times out.

If getSC() or waitForSCDone() does time out the Cypress test will fail.

Logging Timing information for RPC and DataSource transactions

Smart GWT provides a number of helpful APIs which allow developers to intercept slow client-server requests and get timing data, indicating how much time was elapsed in the various processing steps.

Cypress tests can make use of these capabilities to log timing information for slow requests, and optionally cause the test to fail.

The primary APIs for this are as follows:

RPCManager.setTimingDataEnabled() - this method turns on logic to record detailed timing data (client and server side) on every Smart GWT RPC transaction
RPCManager.addProcessingCompleteCallback() - this allows you to register a callback function to fire after every Smart GWT RPC transaction completes
RPCManager.getTransactionDescription() - this method returns a brief description of a transaction
RPCManager.getTimingData() - returns the timing data for a transaction as a Tree
RPCManager.getFormattedTimingData() - this formats the timing data as a string for logging purposes

The sample commands.js file includes a command "enableSC_RPCTimeout" which makes use of Event emitters in Cypress to take advantage of these APIs and log timing information for slow requests.

enableSC_RPCTimeout should typicaly be called only once, at the beginning of your test. It will remain active as long as the page is loaded. The command takes the following arguments:

logThreshold Any RPCs whose duration exceeds this threshold will log timing information via a cy.log() call.
timeoutThreshold Any RPCs whose duration exceeds this threshold will cause the test to fail.
options This parameter in an object where you can set various attributes to configure logging behavior. These include:
- logDetail: one of "none", "summary", "detailed" or "all"
- logSuccess: If true, log a 'success' type notification for RPC transactions that do not exceed the specified timing threshold. This log will not include any explicit timing data
- includeClientTimings: Should detailed timing for client-processing be included?
- includeServerTimings: Should detailed timing for server-processing be included?

See the implementation in commands.js for more details.

Here's an example of how this might be used in a .cy.js file:

  // If the turnaround takes more than this many millis, log the timing information
  const LOG_TIMEOUT = 1000;
  // If the turnaround takes longer than this many millis, the test fails
  const FAILURE_TIMEOUT = 5000;
  
  describe('Test Suite', () => { 
 
      beforeEach(() => {
          cy.visit(<target url>); 
          cy.enableSC_RPCTimeout(LOG_TIMEOUT, FAILURE_TIMEOUT, {logDetail:"detailed"});
      });
    
      it('Perform some test', () => {
          ... // test code goes here
      });
 
  });

Note: enableSC_RPCTimeout() is effectively "invisible" to the flow of your test unless a transaction is encountered which exceeds the timeoutThreshold. If you want to explicitly wait for all pending actions to complete at any point, including waiting for active RPCRequests to be resolved, you can use the waitForSCDone command described above.

Drag and Drop Interaction

To achieve this goal, the easiest way is to use a specialized plugin for Cypress, where you only need to run the following command:

      npm install --save-dev @4tw/cypress-drag-drop

Finally, you need to add the following code to the commands.js file:

      require("@4tw/cypress-drag-drop");

This way, you can perform drag and drop interactions by simply running the following command:

      cy.get('@source').drag('@target')

where '@source' is obtained via cy.get()/getSC(<locator>).as('source') and '@target' via cy.get()/getSC(<locator>).as('target').

Final Note

In addition to the custom commands and approaches described above, developers can also always use the cy.window() command to execute arbitrary JavaScript with access to the application scope.

Cypress configuration for custom Smart GWT commands

The custom commands shipped in the Smart GWT SDK will respect the following settings if present in the Cypress configuration:

scLogCommands: Boolean - if true each command will be logged via cy.log()
scCommandTimeout: Number - default timeout for getSC() and waitForSCDone() in ms

Interface SmartClientCypress

Integrating Smart GWT with Cypress