mechanic: A JavaScript repository from jaykz52

#mechanic.js (a CSS-style selector engine for UIAutomation)

mechanic.js lets you take the power of UIAutomation with the simplicity of modern javascript CSS selector engines to make your UIAutomation scripts terse and beautiful.

Use mechanic.js to trim down your iOS automation scripts or to cut out the cruft in your iOS UATs. Not sure how to get started? Take a look at the wiki for ideas!

You can also just use it to have fun. Want to click every button in the application? That's one line of code with mechanic. Need to get screenshots of every table cell in your favorite UITableView? Still just one line.

Download mechanic.js and give it a try!

##Features

Selecting elements with mechanic.js looks a lot like jQuery, Dojo, Zepto, etc. The following will select all UIAStaticText elements in the element named "My Scroll View":

$('[name=My Scroll View] text');

Mechanic provides selector shortcuts to remove some of the verbosity in selecting elements by type. If you know the name of the element you want to use you can prepend the name with #:

$('#My Scroll View');

More complex CSS-style selectors are also supported:

// all UIAStaticText elements directly descended from a tabbar
$('tabbar > text');
// all buttons inside the window named 'Main'
$('window[name=Main] button')
// the text field with a value of 'Search'
$('textfield[value=Search]')
// all buttons plus a specific element by name
$('button, #Continue')

If you've already got a hold of the instances you care about, they can be passed into mechanic, giving them all the benefits of mechanic:

var mainWindow = UIATarget.localTarget().frontMostApp().mainWindow();
$(mainWindow).children().log();		// this calls logElement() internally

Mechanic comes with a number of utility functions to make your life easier:

$.backgroundApp(2);
$.delay(5);			// this calls UIATarget.localTarget().delay() internally
$("window").children().log();

Many of the utility functions are also tagged onto the selector implementation to allow chaining of selector commands and app-level commands, creating a nice cadence to your automation scripts. The following code captures screenshots of each cell in the "trip table" UITableView, waits for 5 seconds, and then logs their parent:

$.delay(5);
$('[name=trip table] cell')
	.capture()
	.delay(5)
	.parent().log();

Many of the UIAutomation user interaction functions have been simplified:

$.volume({direction: "up", duration: 2});	// UIATarget.localTarget().holdVolumeUp(2)
$.volume({direction: "down"});				// UIATarget.localTarget().clickVolumeDown();
$.prefs({
	"pref1": "value1", 						// ... frontMostApp().setPreferencesValueForKey("value1", "pref1");
	"pref2": "value2"						// ... frontMostApp().setPreferencesValueForKey("value2", "pref2")
});

###... and more!

Mechanic has many more functions to make your life in iOS automation easier. Read the API documentation to see just what all can be done with Mechanic.js!

##Extending Mechanic.js

If there's a feature you're missing, it's easy to extend mechanic with your own "mixins"

(function() {
	$.extend($, {
		someAwesomeFeature: function() {
			// do something awesome
		},
		andAnother: function(someArg, anotherArg) {
			// more amazing greatness
		}
	});
	$.extend($.fn, {
		aNewSelectorMethod: function() {
			// yadda yadda yadda
			return this;	// returning 'this' allows you to chain selector-based functions together
		}
	});
})();

$.someAwesomeFeature();
$("tableview").aNewSelectorMethod();

##Including Mechanic.js

Grab a copy of mechanic.js and place it alongside your UIAutomation scripts. At the top of your UIAutomation script(s), import mechanic.js:

#import "mechanic.js"

// you'll now have "mechanic" (with "$" as a shortcut) in the global context.
mechanic("#some element name").ancestry().capture();
...

##Building

You'll need Ruby and Rake to build mechanic. Pull down the repository with git, and run rake:

$ rake

This will concat all of the mechanic modules into 1 file and place it in a "dist" folder. It also outputs a minified version using Google's Closure compiler (which is not entirely important in light of the environment mechanic.js is run under).

##Testing

Progress has been made in writing specs to provide test coverage for mechanic. The specs are jasmine specs, and can only currently be ran in a standalone static html file that serves as the spec runner. I'd like to get to the point where these are ran via jasmine-headless, but in the meantime you can run the tests by opening spec/runner.html in any modern browser.

To add additional specs, you can either append the specs to an existing spec file (there is a spec for each module), or you can create a separate spec and add a script tag pointing to the new spec in spec/runner.html

##Feature Requests/Bugs

Mechanic is not perfect. Submit bugs and feature requests if there's something that you think is missing! If you encounter bugs, please report it on mechanic's Issues page: http://github.com/jaykz52/mechanic/issues

If you've got a fix in mind, fork and submit a pull request. We need contributors!

##Contributing

The project is currently in its infancy. We need API documentation, additional features, and test coverage (!!!), so feel free to get in touch via github, or just start submitting patches! Try to keep patches to single issues, this will make our lives easier in the long term. If you or your organization is interested in adopting mechanic.js and have questions, feel free to contact Jason at jason.kozemcak@gmail.com

##License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.