python

Re-evaluating and bouncing

/ jankka / Leave a comment

I managed to actually re-evaluate my plans and combine them to my skill-set. There is a slight cap there. I can now see, that the skills of my programming are not near the needs of the project. Now that means that I’ll have to build the resources.

This means, of course, that the Algorithm -training is going to be continued, but that it is not enough. In fact I decided to get back to basics and go through two topics.

  1. Programming in Python 3
  2. Twisted tutorial (and everything related)

So getting those 2 things done will, eventually, get me closer to my ultimate goal: to become an efficient technical tester (A Test Toolsmith, some might say).

Now earlier, in this kind of projects, I’ve let myself sidetrack myself. Pretty easily also. So in this case, I’ll have to learn myself some discipline and perseverance. What I mean is that no matter if I get the ideas on how to develop the project I have in mind (being the messaging answering machine or my Crossfit whiteboard), I should only write the ideas down and get back to them after I’ve finished the ‘course’.

Now the learning should not take too long. Honestly put, I have had programming education in Java and Python. Java -education took place long time ago, just before I was hired at my first Test Engineer -job. The Python training, in the other hand was only few years ago. So in that way re-learning the stuff (and adding more, the course was just a basic one) should not take too much time. And this time I just have to make it all the way. The benefit on having this done at home, as my private project, is that I can also implement my skills right away after I’ve done the learning. Lately the usage of my learned skills has been more or less nothing. I know it is matter of determination at work, too, but previous tasks at work has kept me so busy otherwise that the usage of any coding capabilities has been more or less closer to the zero. Now that also seems to be changing, hopefully for good.

Besides Python, I do have a sneaky feeling that I should learn a bit more groovy. Which actually means that I should refresh also the java -skills. Not the worst idea either. Maybe after the Python is done I can concentrate more on groovy. Besides, we do use groovy -scripting when using SoapUI at work, so that one comes also naturally by the work, too. The other day I managed to even fetch a file from FTP to my desktop. Woohoo 😀

Last, but not least is that I do still have my project plans. To create something useful by using Python, Robot Framework and ATDD -methods to test and create everything. I just need to build my wheels first. Slow and steady should eventually win the race.

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Install Robot Framework to Ubuntu 14.04

/ jankka / 3 Comments

By following these fairly easy steps you can get the Robot Framework with Selenium2Library and SSHLibrary installed on Ubuntu 14.04. Now you could go and fetch the installation packages and for example compile everything from the scratch. That’s all just fine with ,e. Anyhow, you could also use these instructions and slip all the hassle.

First of all, to install everything, you will need to have pip. Pip is a Python package installer and it helps you out a lot in case you need to install anything related to Python.

  • Install pip 
    sudo apt-get install python-pip
  • Install Robot Framework
sudo pip install robotframework
  • Install Selenium2Library
sudo pip install robotframework-selenium2library
  • Install SSHLibrary
sudo pip install robotframework-sshlibrary

Now that was all I needed for getting started. However modifying the Robot Framework Test Cases from a text editor is a tricky business. So it would be wise to either use LibreOffice Calc or some other software that can read Tab Separated -files. There’s also a bunch of plugins for vim, Emacs, Sublime and Eclipse (or LiClipse) to get the TSV -format highlighted in the editor. The other way to do it is to use Robot Framework IDE, called RIDE. RIDE is indeed a decent tool for handling the keywords and variables in a correct format. The installation procedure, however, was not at all that straightforward as you might think. While you can install the RIDE with pip, you still need to have wxPython in order to run it.

  • Install RIDE
sudo pip install robotframework-ride
sudo apt-get install libwxgtk2.8-dev libwxgtk2.8-dbg
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install python-wxtools python-wxgtk2.8-dbg

Now you can get the ride started on command line by easily writing ride.py on the terminal. Happy trails 😀 Next article should be about installing the whole stuff to Windows. Which seems to be a whole lot harder than it should be.

Cross platform rant

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I just can’t get it; How come it seems to be too difficult for developers provide a cross platform functionality that actually works? I mean come on you there. I’ve been learning to use this Robot Framework as the starting point for my own private ATDD -project (Called Marvin, due to Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy, of course). This morning I started to create more test cases in order to start (later on) the development of the new log in -features. And I thought it would be a good use for my work laptop. Really, it has 16 GB of RAM, a processor and a hard drive. The only unfortunate thing about it is that it uses Windows 7. Due to reasons not quite clear to me, to be honest. It seems to have something to do with the IT -departments capabilities on monitoring and updating the end -users laptops and most likely the ability to remote -reset the hard drive in case the laptop is stolen. Or lost. Apparently the solution used there, in the wide America, is not flexible enough to be used in the real world. Well, now I’m just being nasty here, but still, we do develop stuff that runs above Linux and the development is done on windows. This of course applies to testing, too. Sigh.

Anyhow, everything worked just fine in the beginning. I did install the RobotFramework -eclipse -plugin and all. Ended up installing Robot Framework and its Selenium2Webdriver -library, too. Like I did last week on the Linux- & OSX- laptops. Like said, everything was fine. Until I had to actually execute the tests I had created.

I just can’t get the ancient profile -thinking Firefox keeps having on windows. Really. There’s no point of that. At the moment it actually really just slows down the development. And of course gains my frustration and gets me writing this blog -entry (which is not that bad thin, though). I tried to follow the instructions, too. Really guys, you who develop the Robot Framework, you could create a decent entry on how to configure Firefox and webdriver in Windows in order to get the test cases executed. All I found was Python Webdriver -instructions, which I have been using previously myself. Those do work. But there was no single entry anywhere that pointed to a working version of the setup.

So here I am; Browsing the web on my Firefox running on my ancient laptop that runs Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (With encrypted HardDrive, by the way) and getting ready to install the RobotFramework Eclipse -plugin to LiClipse pulling the latest changes from GitHub and executing the actual tests. In windows that was impossible (well ok, just NOT worth the effort), in Linux, it should not take more than 30 minutes for me to get a decent FAIL on the first test cases.

Learning curves

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It seems I have a road ahead. Not sure what is going to happen, but at least I know that I’ll enjoy the ride. The ride will be long and it will be hard at times, but all I have to do is to remember that I have all the time in the world for this and the target is not to create a perfect application, but to learn how to automate tests and develop with Python and Robot Framework. Both skills I see as needed in the future.

First of all, after everything was installed yesterday, I sat down and went through some tutorials. Both git & Robot Framework are getting more familiar now. Far from being perfect, but at least I’ve been using both. Git is, by the way, a lot more intuitive with the commands than CVS. And it really neat to use a service like GitHub to store my stuff in. At the moment the solution I started to lab with is stored as private in GitHub. In the future I plan to create a public variant on that in order to get it shared properly.

I also managed to start the Algorithms -project and created the first excercise. It is a simple insertion sort I managed to get together by help from stackoverflow (a really good site to search for information;)) and a slight use of my brain. I actually needed the stackoverflow -solution more or less as interpreter to the algorithm -books pseudo -code.

And last, but not least, I actually have now done my first time ever ATDD -approach on developing. The test case was created and it failed in the beginning. After some coding I managed to get it also go through and got a PASS as result. And the test case is of course using selenium webdriver -library to verify that the web -page is up and running.

As a bonus I actually got an idea about a solution on how to parse some input strings properly with groovy -script in SoapUI. A thing I will need to do at work next week anyhow.

So to say, it has been a proper weekend.

Sidekick

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Apparently it never is enough. Nothing is. Man born a hoarder is a hoarder, even during the nights or weekends. The last 2-3 weeks have been kind of challenging mayhem at work. I have to admit that my capability in adopting to varying situations has been tested. Several times. Long days, tough days. No time to reset, besides in the evenings at home or at the gym. Mostly both. Luckily training the unknown when following the CrossFit helps me mentally to get used to attacking the unknown. That’s a blessing. But even though it has been rough, it surely seems I haven’t been capable to do enough on the creative side.

I’ve been bouncing this idea of web -service that could help me as a tester. And since nobody is going to do it for me – partly due to my lack of capability to describe it properly and inthusiastically enough, partly due to the fact that every single other one at the work is evenly loaded – I’ll need to do it myself.

What I have planned is to do the whole stuff with Open Source SW, using Python, Django and git. Cucumber has been fetched and installed, as well as RobotFrameWork. Those are the tools for me to use.

Developing is a creative process and I’m pretty sure I’ll learn a lot on the way. I’m going to tackle this from the ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development) point of view. Hopefully I learn new stuff for testing as well as the crucial stuff for automating my tests and using development skills as tools for my work as a tester.

Now, since this is going to be part of my work, it is going to be a system test support tool, I cannot release anything (at least as it is) on my GitHub. I do have plans, though, to put something there, but as stripped version.

So far the project has been setting up stuff: Yesterday, a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 to my Dell Latitude, today getting the tools installed and reading the first introduction chapter for Git -usage. Tomorrow I should be good to go.

And for the record, I don’t except things being too ready too soon. This is going to be done for my education and amusement only. Status updates might follow every now and then anyhow 😀

Building up the competence

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After being back from vacation has been neat. At least what came to the office atmosphere. The first week I worked almost completely from home, week after that there was almost nobody at the office, so I could really work easily by myself. Now I notice that the sounds of the keyboards rattling and mice buttons clicking keeps bugging me off. Not sure why, though. Usually I get the feeling when I’m tired. And now it’s monday and I won’t admit being tired after nice and refreshing weekend. Luckily there’s Spotify and earphones. 😀

During the holiday I was more or less online all the time, which can be seen as a good or bad. But as my friend has told me, everything has its good and bad drawbacks. I myself found the holiday really good and refreshing. Both on personal and professional level.

As you might know, I’m working as Test Engineer in QA/Test consultant company. The thing is that I got a phone call and an email during my first holiday week telling me I got an interview with a potential (and really interesting) client next monday, if it just suited my plans. Well, it did. I went to the interview and ended up having a test exam delivered to me the next day. Not completely unexpected, for they were looking for test developers.

I’ve been in  a similar situation before, last year at Spotify and that did not go too well. Or at least I found something I was not capable of doing. Regardless on the training I’ve taken and the education I have, my development capabilities were far from perfect. I did my best ( at the time) and came up with solution made with bash -scripts.

This time, though, I decided to really give it a shot with a decent language. I did have my Python -training   last year, for test automation purposes the language feels still to be really good one. Sadly I did not have any possibility to start using it at my previous work. Well, I might have could, but I never did even try. Besides that I did stick up with my old habits (and bash -scripts), which really rarely leads to anything new and exiting. 

So I went and jump into Python. Ended up doing some Python -related stuff few hours per day for around 10 days. With some breaks, for it still was my holiday 😉 It basically meant I did work around 3 days with Python and ended up with one solution. Then I got back at work and noticed I could make it a little bit better before delivering to the client. Which I did.

Now that the version is delivered I can see it’s not perfect. They rarely are. So at least I’ve got something to work with still.

This all has been really interesting. Getting inside the development, even for test purposes, has been an eye opener. More or less it seems that this has been the one tool missing from my case. So in that way I really do understand using my own time on learning and getting inside Python. For now on it will definitely be easier for me to adapt to that kind of situation. Besides that, now I can keep up learning myself more and more. I suppose that is the best way to do it. To build up and maintain the competence while I still can. My target is now to keep on developing something with Python daily. The same thing I’ve had my writing; I’ll need to create a new habit out of it. By that way I’ll keep up my touch to the language and hopefully will get my competence built up more and more every day. Well at least weekdays. Weekends are still worth to be used with family 😀

Now I’m not saying people should use their own time doing job -related stuff, and I myself don’t see I was doing it like that. I just used the work as an excuse for getting an uplift for my own competence. And (you might argue with this) my competence is not made only for work purposes, it is something I can use in my everyday life, somehow, too. Even if I won’t sit down and code I can learn myself how to get to know new stuff and that won’t hurt in the real life situations either.

Now, few tips:

  1. Eclipse & pyDev is a brilliant couple. I did myself use ADT Bundle for Eclipse for we need Android development environment for test automation purposes.
  2.  Stackoverflow has been a brilliant source of information when in need. And I’ve been using it a lot 😀
  3. In case you need to add plot graph on your web site (I need to) it seems matplotlib could do the trick.  Here’s how to get it installed in OS X Mountain Lion
$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSkL raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"
$ brew doctor
$ brew install python
$ export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/share/python:$PATH
$ easy_install pip
$ brew install gfortran
$ pip install numpy
$ pip install scipy
$ brew install pkg-config
$ brew install freetype
$ brew install libpng
$ pip install matplotlib
$ python
>>> import numpy
>>> import scipy
>>> import matplotlib

  

What is a test tool?

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KuvaIn order to really discuss something worthwhile at this blog, I’d need to know what actually is a test tool? To gather information and thoughts about the test tools will be way easier if I know what to investigate.

As I mentioned before there is bunch of text editors, as well as internal/external blogs (such as this?) that could be used as test journals, test data editors and for interpreting test data. As an addition to that post I’d really like to see a tool that combines the journaling possibility seamlessly and easily to the test tools used.

Which brings us to the variety of the tools. There is scripting tools for running and automating test cases. Formost you can use the OS -native tools to automate some part of the test process.

For example there’s shell -scripting possibilities in Windows -machines. You can easily edit the scripts that can be used in command prompt by using the notepad or whatever editor there is. The problem that I see nowadays is more or less the fact that there’s not much you can do from Windows -shell. The command variety is limited and as stated, most of the stuff you want to get done requires the actual GUI. You can, however, automate some tool -usage, e.g. java-, ant-, cvs/svn/git -commands in order to proceed with the normal, and boring, repetitious steps on testing process. You could also use Perl and Python from the prompt. 

That is much less than what linux -shell can do. Bash -scripting (ok, there’s other command line interpreters than just the bash, I know ;)) with whatever linux/unix -distribution is more simple to get done and is way much effective due to the fact that the interpreters can execute a huge variety of their own functions plus call system applications, perl– & python -interpreters etc.

I will return to both of these interfaces later on as separate blog entries (one or more per interface). They certainly deserve it. The question still remains: Can the command prompts and their interpreters be referred as test tools?

I myself think so. The thing that remains to figure out is how much we can rely on the software and tool provided by the vendor of the OS (or a GNU -cult for that matter) and how much we need to take in consideration that they have their limits and defects, too. And last, but not least, when should we start using some other test tool as the ones provided by the OS we are using when testing. And yes, there’s a slight difference if you’re testing  the software and using it’s OS provided client interface on the test target than on your workstation. Depending on how heavy processes you use on test scripting you need to consider the effect to the test target and taken measurements (CPU & memory usage, thread usage on linux etc.)