Cucumber is a great tool I usually use for BDD in my ruby projects, but yesterday I tried it with Flex, and it was very enjoyable. Here a little example on how to test Flex applications with Cucumber.

First of all you need ruby, then you need to install the following gems:

sudo gem install rspec cucumber watir safariwatir funfx

(I used the following codes on mac os x, with ruby 1.8.6, safari 4.0.3 and funx 0.2.2)

After that open Flex Builder and create a new project called CucumberExample and use the following code for your main mxml file: 0

As you can see, we have a number, 2 buttons and a label. Now create a directory called features inside your flex project folder and create the first Cucumber feature file, called counter: CucumberExample/features/counter.feature: Feature: Counter In order to count something As a flex rock star I want to use my great flex app

Scenario: Increment index Given I open my flex app And I click the increment button Then the label text should be "1" When I click the decrement button Then the label text should be "0" When I click the decrement button Then the label text should be "-1"

It's a test written in pure plain text.

In the features folder create another folder called step_definitions with a blank file called counter_steps.rb, we'll use it later.

Now open the console, go the to flex project root and run your test:

cd /path/to/CucumberExample cucumber features

You should see something like this:

... 1 scenario (1 undefined) 7 steps (7 undefined) 0m0.002s

You can implement step definitions for undefined steps with these snippets:

Given /^I open my flex app$/ do pending end Given /^I click the increment button$/ do pending end Then /^the label text should be "([^\"]*)"$/ do |arg1| pending end When /^I click the decrement button$/ do pending end

Before implementing the steps above, we need to add the funfx component to our library.

Download the latest swc file from rubyforge and place it in your CucumberExample/libs folder (I used the version 0.2.2).

Duplicate the bin-debug folder and rename it to test (you have a bin-debug folder after the first time you run the CucumberExample from FlexBuilder).

Inside the test directory create a file called test_server.rb with the following content:

require 'webrick' server = WEBrick::HTTPServer.new :Port => 9852, :DocumentRoot => File.dirname(__FILE__) trap("INT"){ server.shutdown } server.start

Now you need a compiled version of your project that includes funfx.We'll use it just for testing:

build_test.sh

#!/bin/sh FLEX_SDK_HOME="/Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/3.2.0" "$FLEX_SDK_HOME/bin/mxmlc" -verbose-stacktraces -include-libraries ./libs/funfx-0.2.2.swc "$FLEX_SDK_HOME/frameworks/libs/automation.swc" "$FLEX_SDK_HOME/frameworks/libs/automation_dmv.swc" "$FLEX_SDK_HOME/frameworks/libs/automation_agent.swc" -output ./test/CucumberExample.swf -- ./src/CucumberExample.mxml

Run test compile_test.sh

chmod 755 ./build_test.sh ./build_test.sh

Now open another terminal window and start the test server:

cd /path/to/CucumberExample/test ruby test_server.rb

Open http://localhost:9852/CucumberExample.html with your browser and you should see your flex app.

Now you can come back to your features and implement the step we leave before. Here my implementation:

CucumberExample/features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb

Given /^I open my flex app$/ do open_flex_app end Given /^I click the (increment|decrement) button$/ do |button| click_button("button#{button.capitalize}") end Then /^the label text should be "([^\"]*)"$/ do |text| label_text.should == text end

open_flex_app, click_button and label_text are methods defined in my env.rb file.

CucumberExample/features/support/env.rb

require "rubygems" require 'funfx/browser/safariwatir' module FlexWorld def open_flex_app @browser.goto("http://localhost:9852/CucumberExample.html") end def click_button(button_id) @flex_app.button(:id => button_id).click end def label_text @flex_app.label(:id => "myLabel").text end end Before do @browser = Watir::Safari.new @flex_app = @browser.flex_app("CucumberExample", "CucumberExample") end After do @browser.close end World(FlexWorld)

Now you are ready to run your tests. Start the test_server and then the features. You should have an error:

Then the label text should be "1" # features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb:9 expected: "1", got: "0" (using ==)

This because we didn't implement the functionality yet in our flex app. So, change the mxml file with the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute"> <mx:Number id="index">0</mx:Number> <mx:VBox width="300" height="200" backgroundColor="white"> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="30"> <mx:Button id="buttonDecrement" label="-" width="100%" click="index--" /> <mx:Button id="buttonIncrement" label="+" width="100%" click="index++" /> </mx:HBox> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="100%" verticalAlign="middle" horizontalAlign="center"> <mx:Label id="myLabel" text="{index}"/> </mx:HBox> </mx:VBox> </mx:Application>

It's the same code but I added the click action to the increment and decrement buttons. Now compile the new code and run the features again:

./build_test.sh cucumber features

You shoiuld have the following output, with all the seven steps passed:

Feature: Counter In order to count something As a flex rock star I want to use my great flex app Scenario: Increment index # features/counter.feature:6 Given I open my flex app # features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb:1 And I click the increment button # features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb:5 Then the label text should be "1" # features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb:9 When I click the decrement button # features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb:5 Then the label text should be "0" # features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb:9 When I click the decrement button # features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb:5 Then the label text should be "-1" # features/step_definitions/counter_steps.rb:9 1 scenario (1 passed) 7 steps (7 passed) 0m9.781s

If you have any problems you may want to clear the cache from safari.

I used the funfx gem from rubyforge but it's not up to date. If you want you can get the new code from github, it should have new features.