It seems that some UI automation tools struggle with GWT grids & the asynchronous aspect of Ajax based applications. Has anyone tried Watir with an GWT\Ajax application. Please share your experiences.
1 Answer
Watir drives a real browser, so it should work. We tried that but at the end settled for our own tool that drives either Firefox or other browser (using WebDriver). Additionally you can pick anything from "no code at all" to "full Java (optionally JRuby) code". The link to the tool is in my profile.
What is most challenging and this is not related to the tool, you have to wait for certain states to happen, before you can continue. The asynchronous stuff forces you to do so. So despite the tool, you have to "code" or train your tool to do that. That is error-prone and it takes a while to master it, but you can get it to work.
We found it very difficult to deal with GWT/GXT due to the dynamic IDs and the lack of semantics in the html code (aka class-attributes). A good automation here requires help from the developers.
