Spix

Spix is a minimally invasive UI testing library that enables your Qt/QML app's UI to be controlled either via c++ code, or through an http RPC interface.

UI elements are referenced through names and paths which are robust against design changes. To click on a button you write

mouseClick("mainWindow/ok_button");

To provide an RPC test interface to your app, only add these three lines to your main(...) function:

spix::AnyRpcServer server;
auto bot = new spix::QtQmlBot();
bot->runTestServer(server);

And a test script in python could look like this:

import xmlrpc.client

s = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy('http://localhost:9000')
s.mouseClick("mainWindow/Button_1")
s.wait(200)
s.mouseClick("mainWindow/Button_2")
resultText = s.getStringProperty("mainWindow/results", "text")
s.quit()

You can also use PyAutoGUI in combination with Spix. Have a look at the example script.

What are the applications of Spix?

The main use for Spix is to automatically test the UI of your Qt/QML application and make sure that it behaves as you expect. However, you can also use Spix as an easy way to remote control existing Qt/QML applications or to automatically generate and update screenshots for your documentation.

Two modes of operation

Spix can be used in two ways, which are different in how events are generated and sent to your application:

Generate Qt events directly

You can use Spix to directly create Qt events, either from C++ as a unit test, or from an external script via the network through RPC. Since the Qt events are generated directly inside the app, and do not come from the system, the mouse coursor will not actually move and interaction with other applications is limited. On the plus side, this mechanism is independent from the system your app is running on and can easily be used to control software on an embedded device via the network (RPC).

Generate system events externally

In this case, Spix is not generating the events itself. Instead, you use a script to query Spix for the screen coordinates of qt objects and then generate events on the system level through other tools. One option is to use python together with PyAutoGUI for this, as is done in the RemoteCtrl example.

Requirements

Qt
AnyRPC

Current Features

Send mouse events (click, move, drag/drop)
Drop mime data from external apps
Enter text
Check existence and visibility of items
Get property values of items (text, position, color, ...)
Take and save a screenshot
Quit the app
Remote control, also of embedded devices / iOS

Building Spix

Spix uses cmake and can be build with the standard cmake commands once cloned:

git clone https://github.com/faaxm/spix
cd spix
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

You can also have a look at the build scripts in ci/, which are run on the build server to build and test Spix.

If you installed the dependencies (like AnyRPC) in a non-standard directory you can point cmake to it by setting CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH, so instead of cmake .. you run:

cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/libs ..

Choochmeque/spix