wdi5 - release, state of things, outlook

[vobu]

When wdi5 was announced as UIveri5-successor mid-February, the announcement also contained a roadmap and an outlook on what's next for the tool.

SAP took the opportunity and sponsored the Open-Source development of wdi5 to make sure the tool reaches feature parity with UIVeri5.

As the official release 0.9.0 just happened, let's look at where we're at.

roadmap: status

TypeScript rewrite and drop kapsel-/Cordova-support

☑️ done

UIVeri5 element matchers and feature parity

☑️ done - there's support for all OPA5 matchers plus the ability to select all controls of a certain type.

Test Recorder

There's a PR for adding the wdi5 browser.asControl dialect to UI5's test recorder currently in the works, so consider this done pretty soon.

docker image(s)

☑️ done - published into the GitHub Container registry, as a combination of wdi5-version and Node.js-version.

browserstack- and sourcelabs-integration

thanks to the standard integration with WebdriverIO, wdi5 will mostly re-use its' feature; work is under way.

extension API

work is under way, first extension will be a BTP login option for wdi5.

wdi5 playground

to lower the entry barrier as much as possible, we're still evaluating options; one of them being a Jupyter Notebook hookup to a preconfigured wdi5 environment. But nothing definite here yet.

wdi5 generator for easy-ui5

in the works, will happen 🙂

support visual regression testing

same as for the "playground", different options are still evaluated. No decision yet on what approach/extension/tool to take.

some non-roadmap highlights

UI5 Control API support, including object access

Once a UI5 control is retrieved via await browser.asControl(selector), all API methods of that control can be executed on it.

const button = await browser.asControl(buttonSelector)

const text = await button.getText() // this is getText() from https://ui5.sap.com/#/api/sap.m.Button%23methods/getText !

fluent async api

To allow more concise coding, an asynchronous Promise chain can be awaited within a single instruction:

// same as above, but as an async Promise chain

const text = await browser.asControl(buttonSelector).getText()

support UI5 web components

thanks to the standard integration with UI5's test API, retrieving and operating a UI5 Web Component is little different from working with a regular UI5 control:

const webcomponent = await browser.asControl(webComponentSelector)

await webcomponent.setValue("wdi5!")

The example uses the retrofit of the UI5 web components to offer "Control"-compliant APIs, such as the generic setValue e.g. for input fields.

TDD with –watch

By passing the --watch at test execution, the targeted browsers remains open and changed tests are rerun!
npm run yourWdi5Script – –watch

There will be more blog posts and other content on all of the above coming during the next weeks.

what's next

Fiori Elements "Testing Library" support

Still in the works, and will be described in more detail soon - there's a generic "Testing Library" for operating standard User Interactions on Fiori Elements applications. So far, it is compatible with OPA5 only, but integration into wdi5 will happen as well, done by the fantastic @nlunets.

Drag'n'Drop testing

Yes, that's right: simulating dragging and dropping a UI5 element.

Also already in the works, done by the fantastic @ph-alsvik.

Multiremote support

An enhancement to WebdriverIO's excellent "multiremote"-feature - think of it as operating more than 1 browser within the same test(s), for simulating multi-user interactions with a UI5 app; done by the fantastic @monavari-lebrecht.

All of the above features will come to wdi5 from UI5 community members, not via a channeled company-driven development effort - from the UI5 community, for the UI5 community 💙🤗!

That's just another reason for moving wdi5 into the ui5-community - yes, after the inital wave of SAP-sponsored development flattens out, the community-driven wdi5 will also move digitally into the proper ui5-community GitHub organization. More on that in a later blog post.

And last but not least: there will be a workshop on using wdi5 at UI5con 2022! That's where we'll work together to "test all the things"™ in a curiosity-driven and friendly manner - see you there ✌️