Watir on Windows XP – Installation

Watir – Web Application Testing in Ruby – I’m thinking about adding this as part of my standard Rails integration tests. I like the idea of capturing keystokes that a user might actually run. Plus, it makes for a dandy demo tool. Here’s the summary of installation steps. I’m assuming you’re Rails-aware enough to have an application in place, and you know how to install Ruby gems: Rails Side – gem install watir gem install tg4rb Firefox Side – Install the TestGen4Web add-on Install the JSSH extension – start here to determine which version, and follow all the instructions on the page. Once you restart Firefox, the TestGen4Web icon should… Read More

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Software S&M: Rails Development on Windows XP

(Professionals on closed course. Do not attempt this at home.) I love my new company, but it’s an IT staffing outfit, not a software development organization. Sure, it would have been nice to equip the Rails team with new Macs and a dedicated SQL server, but what was actually available was a couple of Dell desktops running Windows XP. So be it – three people on the team, one on a Mac, two on Windows. Can we make this work? The first order of business was to move the design environment from SVN to the Git versioning system. You can do this by installing git as part of the Cygwin… Read More

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RailsConf 2009

It’s highly unlikely that I’ll make it to RailsConf this year, due to continuing employment uncertainties. Too bad, since it’s close by in Las Vegas. Vegas is hurting, so I understand the room rates are still at $99 a night. I went to the first RailsConf 2006 in Chicago on my own dime, just to have the bragging rights. It was great fun, and all the presentations were good quality. I haven’t been able to attend since O’Reilly took over the event, but it looks pretty professional. Here’s a pic of me at RailsConf 2006. A couple of wise guys were working the event, and taking pictures of people who… Read More

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authlogic gem – and a step backwards

I was alerted to the authlogic gem yesterday, so I had to try it out. To my surprise, I discovered that the rails command was no longer working – WTF? I had also lost the rake tasks from my restful_authentication test case. Another mystery. Could the addition of the gems I installed couple of days ago have caused this problem? (See previous post.) Ultimately, I rebuilt my local gem repository with just the basic rails gems, and I got my rails and rake commands working again. Sheesh! That done, I installed the authlogic gem, and I set up a rails app for testing authlogic. Pretty cool – I’ll spend some… Read More

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Testing restful_authentication (Part 1)

The restful_authentication plugin is really nice, and it’s a critical part of any eCommerce site, so you have to test the hell out of it – unless you actually like irate customers. Anyway, unit tests won’t be enough, and Rick Olson (a.k.a. technoweenie) has already stated that he wants to use RSpec going forward, so that’s the first thing to set up. But, Cucumber is getting a lot of air play lately, so I decided to check that out too, as it may be a viable solution for integration testing. So – on to the set up. After viewing Ryan’s Railscasts 71, 155 and 156, I decided to install the… Read More

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