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Watir in 5 Minutes

In this tutorial, in addition to Watir, we will use two more tools, Interactive Ruby Shell (IRB) (IRB) and Firebug: A Firefox Web Development Tool. IRB is already installed with Ruby, but Firebug isn't, so please install it now.

This tutorial uses FireWatir so that it works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS platforms.

Start IRB.

• open command prompt
• type

irb

• you should see

irb(main):001:0>

Let Ruby know you want to use Watir.

• type

require "watir"

• you should see

irb(main):001:0> require "watir"
=> true

• If you get an error, type

require "rubygems"

Start Firefox

• type

Watir::Browser.default = 'firefox'
b = Watir::Browser.new

• a new Firefox window should open
• output is something like this

irb(main):002:0> b = Watir::Browser.new
=> #<FireWatir::Firefox:0x33ed73c url="" title="Mozilla Firefox Start Page">

Go to Google.

• type

  b.goto "http://www.google.com/"
  

• Google home page should open
• output is something like this

irb(main):003:0> b.goto("http://www.google.com/")
=> #<FireWatir::Firefox:0x33ed73c url="" title="Google">

Click the link that has text Images (in the upper left corner).

We will check that the link exists first:

• type

b.link(:text, "Images").exist?

• output is:

irb(main):004:0> b.link(:text, "Images").exist?
=> true

Now we will click it.

• type

b.link(:text, "Images").click

• Image search page should open
• output is something like this

irb(main):005:0> b.link(:text, "Images").click
=> 0

Check there is text Business Solutions on the page.

• type

b.text.include? "Business Solutions"

• you should see

irb(main):027:0> b.text.include? "Business Solutions"
=> true

Enter text Watir in search text field.

To do this, we have to find out some attribute of text field, like id or name, so Watir can find it on the page. We will use Firebug for the first time. To start it, click the little bug icon in the lower right hand corner of Firefox.

You should see this at the bottom of the Firefox window:

The most useful feature of Firebug for us is the 'Click an element in the page to inspect':

Click this button and then click the 'search' text field on the page:

Now we see that search text field has name q, and that is how we will tell Watir to find it. Finally, enter text Watir in search text field.

• type

 b.text_field(:name, "q").set "Watir"

• text should be entered in search text field
• you should see

irb(main):007:0> b.text_field(:name, "q").set "Watir"
=> 0

Click Search Images button.

• type

b.button(:value, "Search Images").click

• search results page should open
• you should see

irb(main):029:0> b.button(:value, "Search Images").click
=> 0

Check there is text Watir in search text field:

• type

b.text_field(:name, "q").value == "Watir"

• you should see

irb(main):009:0> b.text_field(:name, "q").value == "Watir"
=> true

Check that there is image from this wiki:

• type

b.image(:src, /openqa/).exists?

• you should see

irb(main):011:0> b.image(:src, /openqa/).exists?
=> true