This repository contains a proposal for the successor to the current Watir API (version 1). It is still in development, and we welcome any feedback on our mailing list.
The first generation Watir API suffers from a lack consistency and from not being easily extendible in special cases. Some of these issues were addressed in the second generation API, Watir 2, by Jari Bakken and his watir-webdriver implementation. However, even with full HTML 5 compliancy, it was still hard to access all elements and attributes present in the DOM.
Watir 3 is the next generation specification aiming to keep the methods
as consistent as possible, i.e. no special cases, such as browser.link
in Watir 1, and to make the common case as simple and as concise as
possible.
This specification can be extended by a Watir 2 implementation, which again can be extended by a Watir 1 implementation. This means that we in the future can be able to support all three API versions in the same code base. This work is unfortunately still a work in progress.
This specification is so far implemented by OperaWatir.
The specs run a small Sinatra webapp (WatirSpec::Server) to simulate interacting with a web server. However, most specs use the file:// scheme to avoid hitting the server.
Start with
window = OperaWatir::Browser.new.window
Find all <div> tags with
window.div # => Collection of <div>s
window.find_by_tag(:div) # => Array of <div>s
Find all <a href="index.html"> links with
window.a(:href => 'index.html') # => Collection of <a>s with the href attribute equal to 'index.html'
Find all <p>s which are direct descendants of <div>s with (not currently implemented)
window.div.p # => Collection of <p>s
Get attributes with
window.div(:id => 'logo').id # => 'logo'
window.div(:title => 'Products').title # => ['Products', 'Products', …]
Perform actions with gusto!
window.div.click # clicks all the <div>s in the document
window.header.trigger :onMouseMove # triggers a mouse move event on all the <header> elements
Use filters to narrow down your search to find elements like <div id='foo' class='bar'>:
window.div(:id => 'foo', :class => 'bar')
Find invalid elements with any tag name and any attribute name, just
like in jQuery. This will find <foo bar='baz' bah='Hello!'>:
window.foo(:bar => 'baz').bah # => 'Hello!'