It's been a week already? OK this time we're going to actually install some software, Whoo Hoo! WATIRWATIR stands for "Web Application Testing in Ruby". Watir is a free, open-source functional testing tool for automating browser-based tests of web applications. It is pronounced water. As the media friendly sound bite says Watir is written in Ruby so we need to first install Ruby. THE INSTALLThe easiest way to install Ruby is to use the Ruby One-Click installer for windows. We're going to use the latest version 1.8.4-20 stable (ruby184-20.exe) It's not quite one click but it is very easy, just run the setup accepting the defaults. NOTE: I recommend adding the Ruby bin (c:\ruby\bin) directory to your path environment variable making it a lot easier to call from DOS. Once the Ruby install is complete we can install Watir and the easiest way to do that is using (you guessed it) the Watir One-Click Installer We're going to use the latest version 1.4.1. Again run the setup and accept the defaults. RUBY FRIENDLY EDITOROur test scripts are going to be written in Ruby so we are going to need an editor. The Ruby install comes with two editors SciTE and FreeRIDE which was written in Ruby by the way. I prefer to use Notepad++ another freebee which happens to understand the Ruby language and lots more languages to boot. Using Notepad++ means we get nice coloured highlighting when writing scripts. RESOURCESWe are going to go through a few example tests in this series of posts but the impatient amongst you may want to take a look at a few of the resources which are to be found around the tinternet. • Watir User Guide• Ruby Cheat Sheet• Watir Cheat SheetCOMING UP IN PART THREEThat's the environment all setup next time we'll write our first test script, I can't wait!
