Desi McAdam

I spoke at RubyEast this past Friday and I think the presentation went pretty well. It was my first presentation in a speaker/audience type setting so I was very nervous. I have presented at Agile 2006 but it was a game (interactive) and was co-presented by several other people. This presentation was the first time I stood in front of a room full of people and spoke and everything went very well. Like I said I was really nervous but as soon as I got started the nervousness went away. I think I am very lucky because I was able to present to a room full of very nice/cool people and that made the experience a great one. I want to actually thank the people who came to hear me present and who gave me great feedback and encouragement afterwards it really made my day. If you are interested here are the slides for the presentation. A Tour Of Rails Testing using RSpec

I didn’t get to see many of the sessions because I was busy preparing for my talk but I was able to catch Obie’s presentation - Advanced ActiveRecord which was really good (and I am not just saying that because he is my boyfriend). I also caught the ending Keynote where Nap (I actually don’t know his real name) announced the Rails Rumble winners. There were several screencasts and it made me wish that Obie, Clay, Nick and I would have had time to get the video that was shot of us over the weekend edited and ready for prime time. We had a blast doing the competition and while we didn’t win (we got honorable mention) we learned a lot and I think we all grew closer in those 48 hours. The teams that did win did a tremendous job on their apps and well deserved the loot. Take a look at the winners there really are some great apps. Rails Rumble Winners

Friday evening a bunch of people got together after the conference and played several games of Werewolf which is a really fun game to play. I got to know a lot of people during that game and it was a great way to wind down.

Couple of other thoughts before I end the post. ShesGeeky (un)Conference sounds like it is going to kick major ass so any of you ladies out there who can attend make sure you get registered. Additionally, ladies if you want to talk during the conference please contact the organizers.

GrrrlCamp seems to be getting a good footing. I was lucky enough to meet THE Gloria this past Friday and I look forward to being a part of GrrlCamp.

I have taken on an apprentice and she will soon be posting to the blog about her experiences. I am in the process of trying to see if creating an apprenticeship type program run by DevChix is possible because after speaking with Sonia (one of the women on DevChix) she helped me figure out that I would really like to have a program that fits the apprenticeship model rather than a mentoring program. Look for more to come on this in the future.

Today I started putting pagination in the app that I have been working on. Based on recommendations from Obie I decided to use “will_paginate”, a rails plugin for pagination put out by the err the blog guys. It worked amazingly and the view helper was great! I really like the fact that I can apply the same look and feel to all page pagination throughout the app… well umm.. until I wanted to add pagination to a collection not generated from a finder or association. Since I really wanted everything to look the same and behave the same I did the following little trick so that you can call paginate on a plain old array.

class Array
  def paginate(page=1, per_page=15)
    pagination_array = WillPaginate::Collection.new(page, per_page, self.size)
    start_index = pagination_array.offset
    end_index = start_index + (per_page - 1)
    array_to_concat = self[start_index..end_index]
    array_to_concat.nil? ? [] : pagination_array.concat(array_to_concat)
  end
end

Before folks say anything about the above code.. yes I know it could be more concise if I didn’t use all the local variables but I wanted it to be really clear what I was doing here so.. leave it alone.

Now basically you can say

myarray.paginate(params[:page], per_page)

If you want to see it work yourself feel free to run this spec.

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + ‘/../spec_helper’

describe ‘Given we call paginate on an array’ do
  it ’should return an array containing the first 3 elements of the org array when page = 1 and per_page_count = 3′ do
    array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    current_page = 1
    show_per_page = 3
    expected_array = [”a”, “b”, “c”]
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it ’should return an array containing the last 2 elements of the org array when page = 2 and per_page_count = 3′ do
    array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    current_page = 2
    show_per_page = 3
    expected_array = [”d”, “e”]
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it ’should return an array containing all the elements of the org array when page = 1 and per_page_count = 5′ do
    array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    current_page = 1
    show_per_page = 5
    expected_array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it ’should return an array containing all the elements of the org array when page = 1 and per_page_count greater than org number of elements i.e = 6′ do
    array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    current_page = 1
    show_per_page = 6
    expected_array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it ’should return an empty array if you ask for a page that does not exist’ do
    array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    current_page = 3
    show_per_page = 5
    expected_array = []
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it ’should return an empty array if you ask for a negative page number’ do
    array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    current_page = -1
    show_per_page = 5
    expected_array = []
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end

  it ’should return an empty array if you ask for a negative per_page number’ do
    array = [”a”,”b”,”c”,”d”,”e”]
    current_page = 1
    show_per_page = -5
    expected_array = []
    (array.paginate(current_page, show_per_page)).should == expected_array
  end
end

Last night I read Kathy Sierra’s blog about the threats and comments that she has been receiving and I have to tell you that it infuriated me. My immediate thought was, “And people wonder why we have so few women in the industry and even less who are willing to be a part of the blogsphere”. It is incidents like these that make it so difficult to choose IT and Development as a career. These guys may live behind anonymous names while on the internet but I can almost bet that they have at least some behavior that comes out in their day to day work life that causes women around them grief. Now I have made some assumptions here.. I am assuming these are men but I could be wrong.. I doubt it but I could be. Regardless, this sort of thing should not be tolerated. I would like to know how many men receive threats like these? I am speaking of threats against your life or comments as humiliating as the ones left on her blog?

I hate to make it a “women” issue but until some men come forward and say that these sort of things happen to them as well then I have no other choice than to believe these things were said because she is a woman. I was having a discussion with someone I respect a great deal about this last night and his response was that when you put yourself in such a celebrity position you have to expect this sort of thing. He also stated that you should simply ignore it because by not ignoring it we are giving them the attention they are looking for. I completely disagree. By ignoring the situation we indicate to the people who do this sort of thing that it is okay to behave this way. That is not the message that I want to send nor is it the message that I think our community should send. As for the celebrity comment, even celebrities take death threats seriously. My friends response to that was that celebrities only concern themselves with substantiated threats. So what then makes a substantiated threat on the internet? Does someone have to finally show up at your door with a gun to make it legit?

Our industry is one of the few industries that I know of where your career can be made or broken by your blogging behaviors. Blogging is one of the ways in which we share our ideas and thoughts… its part of what we do. I have always had a problem with it being okay to treat someone with disrespect regardless of the forum. Rudeness should not be tolerated but I have heard time and time again from people in this community comments such as “Oh it is just part of it” or “It is just our way”. It should not be tolerated no matter what the physical makeup of the individual being treated rudely is.

I know very few men who would look a women in the eye and call her a “cunt”. They know the level of insult that word carries and most don’t want to be the deliverer of it. Why should it be any less insulting when some coward does it over the internet? I also know very few men who would stand around and let that be said to women in their presence. I doubt my friend would hear that and say “Just ignore him .. he’s an asshole and if you let it bother you then you are just giving in to his need for attention”. If he did then he isn’t a very good friend.

I am hoping that one day women won’t have to worry about these sorts of things because I actually do love my job and I want more women to see that our industry IS a place where they can exist in peace and actually be successful through hard work.

One last thing that my friend said to me that really got me: “The only reason this is a big deal is because she is a woman… if it were a man no one would give a fuck.” If that is really how men (my friend is male) feel in our community then we have a lot further to go than I thought. I want to believe that people value each other a little more than that. I value PEOPLE more than that. I do and will “give a fuck” no matter who the person is.

I hope that this does not stop Kathy or others from continuing to post. It is like any other threat, if we let it push us down then it will never go away. Her situation may make it such that she feels she must stop posting or speaking and that is her decision but I hope that we are able to fight this sort of thing and stand up to this type of behavior. MLK once said “When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.” I am starting to really get that statement.

This is also posted to Devchix

On my current project we are building a web based application that allows the user to sign up for a service. The signup process is a series of pages for gathering a variety of information (about 8 or so pages). Now… I am a bit on the lazy side so a while back I started using the Selenium IDE to record scripts for moving me to the location in the app that I was interested in. The other day one of the non-techinical folk on the team asked me how to use the Selenium IDE and so I decided to write up a blog post about it. There are a couple of posts out there already in addition to the information on OpenQA but I figure one more post won’t hurt. It really is a very good tool for all types of people from sys admins, PM’s, Business Analysts, developers, to end users doing beta testing. I decided to break up the information based on questions I was asked when showing a couple of folks how to use the app.

What is Selenium?
OpenQA says: Selenium is a UI test tool for web applications. Selenium tests run directly in a browser, just as real users do. Those tests can run in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. No other test tool covers such a wide array of platforms.

What is Selenium IDE?
OpenQA says: Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment (thats what IDE stands for for those who don’t know) for Selenium tests. It is implemented as a Firefox extension, and allows you to record, edit, and debug tests. Selenium IDE includes the entire Selenium Core, allowing you to easily and quickly record and play back tests in the actual environment that they will run. Selenium IDE is not only a recording tool: it is a complete IDE. You can choose to use its recording capability, or you may edit your scripts by hand. With autocomplete support and the ability to move commands around quickly, Selenium IDE is the ideal environment for creating Selenium tests no matter what style of tests you prefer.

Installation:
A firefox extension is an installable enhancement to the browser’s functionality and add features to the application or allows existing features to be modified. Since Selenium IDE is a Firefox extension you get it by downloading and installing the firefox extension. Oh and installing extensions does require you to restart firefox so just keep that in mind before you go any further.
1. Go to OpenQA
2. Click the firefox extensions link under the download bullet of the latest version. This will pop up a box and a button should appear briefly that says “Install Now”. Click on that.
3. This will pop up a box and install the extension. Once its finished click the button on the bottom right corner that says “Restart Firefox”.

How do I run/use the Selenium IDE?
The folks over at OpenQA already did a nice movie so you can go watch that to get the basics.

How do I run a script that I recorded in Firefox against Internet Explorer?
You would need to install Selenium Core or Selenium RC in order to be able to do this. Selenium Core has to be run on the same webserver as the application you are trying to test. So this probably won’t work for non-developer types who don’t have access to what is put on the webserver. If that is the case then you might want to look into using Selenium RC.For information on using and setting up Selenium Core take a look Here and for using Selenium RC look Here.

What is the difference between run, walk, and step?
The only difference between run and walk is that run is faster. They behave exactly the same way. Step on the other requires you to actually push the blue downward right angle arrow key to continue to the next step. When you use Run and Walk with breakpoints the pause button will turn into a pause/resume button. In order to keep going to the next breakpoint just hit the pause/resume button. If you hit play again from a breakpoint or from any command it will start the script over from the beginning.

How do I use breakpoints?
Sometimes when you are running your scripts something breaks and you might want to see the state of the application just before that break or maybe the script exits before you get a chance to see the error on the screen in these cases breakpoints are awesome. Simply chose the line in your script where you want it to stop and put a break point. You do this by right clicking and selecting “Toggle Breakpoint”. Now when you hit the play button it will stop at that command. Additionally you can set a break point and then step through the application from that point on using the step feature.

Can you give an example of when you would want to save the scripts in a different language.
Sometimes QA people or Buisness Analysts or even end users may want to submit the test they used to create the error back to the developers, in this case the developers may like to have the test in the language which they are writing the application in. It may also be the case that the developers themselves change the language based on what they were given or who they may be giving the tests to. In order to change the language the test is output in go to the Selenium IDE tool bar select Options -> Format and then select the language you want the test in.

What is the difference between deleteCookie and deleteCookieAndWait?
In a nut shell don’t use the “andWait” commands. The “andWait” commands should be gone as of the latest version (they are still there but they all do the same things as their couterpart commands i.e deleteCookieAndWait does exactly what deleteCookie does) but for those still on the old version here is the explanation. Typically anytime you see the “andWait” or “withWait” piece tacked on to the end of a command it simply means that you want your script to stop executing any additional commands until it gets back a response saying the command has finished.

How would you handle situations where you would need to change a piece of data entered each time you run the script?
To be honest I haven’t quite figured out how to do this. I am going to try to play around with it a bit and see if I can figure something out. As soon as I do I’ll post an answer to this.

What does the log at the bottom tell me and how do I interpret what it is saying?
From the point of view of a non-technical person the log basically just tells you information about what has happened. Maybe you clicked the back button and the ide didn’t recognize that click and you then clicked some image. In this case you would get an error stating it could not find the element you told it to find. As it turns out the script isn’t on the right page so of course it wouldn’t find it. There are lots of reasons why you might get an error and usually if you step through your script you will find that you are not on the page you expect to be when the command was trying to be executed or some other trivial thing has happened. The log also has general information in the info tag that tells you which commands have been executed etc. All this maybe helpful when trying to figure out what has gone wrong.

Gotchas?
The most common gotchas are around timing and caching/session issues. There are a few commands that you can insert into your scripts in order to help you get around this. For instance if you have a page which has some ajax calls then you might have an issue where your script trys to do something before the call has actually finished. In this case you can insert the command “pause” into the script.
In another situation you may want to make sure that you are starting with a fresh session i.e. no cookies. The command “deleteCookie” can be used in order to make sure this happens.
A full list of Selenium commands can be found Here

So now you guys and girls go play around with it and post back your questions here. I’ll do my best to answer them or at least point you in the right direction.

Next post: Selenium On Rails!

Also check out these posts for information on Selenium IDE:

http://dynamitemap.com/selenium/ - very good introduction

http://ajaxian.com/archives/selenium-ide-07-released - some good questions and answers in the comments section