My Innovative Solution to Test Automation: Easy Wait in Web Automation Scripts

An intuitive and proven solution that utilizes a feature in Ruby, a great scripting language.

This is included in the “My Innovative Solution to Test Automation and Continuous Testing” series.

I started test automation in 2005 (see My Test Automation Journey), at that time, web pages were quite static. There was no or little concept of “waiting” in the context of test automation. We wrote web automation scripts step by step like below (in Watir).

browser.button(:value,"Pay now").click  
# this might take a while
expect(browser.text).to include("RN#")

Then, Web 2.0 came. AJAX and the use of JavaScript make the web page much more dynamic. This introduces challenges to test automation.

Table Of Contents:
· Selenium WebDriver Waits Works for AJAX
· I also made the mistake of “Auto-Waiting”
· My Simple Solution
· Instant Success
· Other Uses

Selenium WebDriver Waits Work for AJAX