Watir (pronounced as Water) is a free open source tool which can be used to automate web applications. It is an extension of Ruby programming language. Unlike most of the other testing tools it gains the advantage of powerful features of Ruby and simulate browser interactions in very simple manner.
Lets see how a simple google search is automated using Watir in few steps.
Install Ruby (1.8.5-24 or later)
Install Watir. Open a command window or shell and issue the following commands
gem update --system
gem install watir
The above two commands update gem installer and then install watir in your system.
Open SciTE ruby editor or notepad and start to create the following script.
ie = Watir::IE.new
ie.text_field(:name, "q").set("WSO2 WSAS")
Save the above file as SimpleTest.rb and run it from the command line by typing SimpleTest.rb
You will see that an Internet Explorer browser instance will automatically be popped up, access google, type "WSO2 WSAS" text and click on search button as a user interacts with the web site.
Lets see what each of the above statements of our test script do.
require "watir" - This is similar to an import statement. This tells ruby script to use Watir as an extension library
ie = Watir::IE.new - Instantiate a new IE browser instance and open it
ie.goto("http://www.google.com") - Instructs IE instance to access google.com
ie.text_field(:name, "q").set("WSO2 WSAS") - Set text, "WSO2 WSAS" as the search query
ie.button(:name, "btnG").click - Click the "search" button
If you need to simulate web interaction with Firefox, you can use FireWatir, which allows to write test scripts for Firefox browser.