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Weasel(3pm) User Contributed Perl Documentation Weasel(3pm)

NAME

Weasel - Perl's php/Mink-inspired abstracted web-driver framework

VERSION

0.29

SYNOPSIS

  use Weasel;
  use Weasel::Session;
  use Weasel::Driver::Selenium2;
  my $weasel = Weasel->new(
       default_session => 'default',
       sessions => {
          default => Weasel::Session->new(
            driver => Weasel::Driver::Selenium2->new(%opts),
          ),
       });
  $weasel->session->get('http://localhost/index');

DESCRIPTION

This module abstracts away the differences between the various web-driver protocols, like the Mink project does for PHP.

While heavily inspired by Mink, "Weasel" aims to improve over it by being extensible, providing not just access to the underlying browser, yet to provide building blocks for further development and abstraction.

Pherkin::Extension::Weasel provides integration with Test::BDD::Cucumber (aka pherkin), for BDD testing.

For the actual page interaction, this module needs a driver to be installed. Currently, that means Weasel::Driver::Selenium2. Other driver implementations, such as Sahi <http://sahipro.com/> can be independently developed and uploaded to CPAN, or contributed. (We welcome and encourage both!)

DIFFERENCES WITH OTHER FRAMEWORKS

The central registry of xpath expressions to find common page elements helps to keep page access code clean. E.g. compare: 

   use Weasel::FindExpanders::HTML;
   $session->page->find('*contains', text => 'Some text');

With

   $session->page->find(".//*[contains(.,'Some text')]
                              [not(.//*[contains(.,'Some text')])]");

Multiple patterns can be registered for a single mnemonic, which will be concatenated to a single xpath expression to find the matching tags in a single driver query.

Besides good performance, this has the benefit that the following

   $session->page->find('*button', text => 'Click!');

can be easily extended to match Dojo toolkit's <http://dojotoolkit.org/documentation/> buttons, which on the HTML level don't contain visible button or input tags, simply by using the widget support set:

   use Weasel::Widgets::Dojo;
All elements in "Weasel" are of the base type "Weasel::Element", which encapsulates the regular element interactions (click, find children, etc).

While most elements will be represented by "Weasel::Element", it's possible to implement other wrappers. These offer a logical extension point to implement tag-specific utility functions. E.g. "Weasel::Widgets::HTML::Select", which adds the utility function "select_option".

These widgets also offer a good way to override default behaviours. One such case is the Dojo implementation of a 'select' element. This element replaces the select tag entirely and in contrast with the original, doesn't keep the options as child elements of the 'select'-replacing tag. By using the Dojo widget library

   use Weasel::Widget::Dojo;

the lack of the parent/child relation between the the select and its options is transparently handled by overriding the widget's "find" and "find_all" methods.

DEPENDENCIES

Returns a reference to a hash with names of the keys in the hash keys and single-character strings containing the key codes as the values.

ATTRIBUTES

The name of the default session to return from "session", in case no name argument is provided.
Holds the sessions registered with the "Weasel" instance.

SUBROUTINES/METHODS

Returns the session identified by $name.

If $value is specified, it's associated with the given $name.

AUTHOR

Erik Huelsmann

CONTRIBUTORS

Erik Huelsmann Yves Lavoie

MAINTAINERS

Erik Huelsmann

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

Bugs can be filed in the GitHub issue tracker for the Weasel project:
https://github.com/perl-weasel/weasel/issues

SOURCE

The source code repository for Weasel is at
https://github.com/perl-weasel/weasel

SUPPORT

Community support is available through perl-weasel@googlegroups.com <mailto:perl-weasel@googlegroups.com>.

MAINTAINERS

Erik Huelsmann

BUGS

Bugs can be filed in the GitHub issue tracker for the Weasel project:
https://github.com/perl-weasel/weasel/issues

SOURCE

The source code repository for Weasel is at
https://github.com/perl-weasel/weasel

SUPPORT

Community support is available through perl-weasel@googlegroups.com <mailto:perl-weasel@googlegroups.com>.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

 (C) 2016-2021  Erik Huelsmann

Licensed under the same terms as Perl.

2021-09-30 perl v5.32.1