Selenium Nodes for KNIME: Extension Development Guide

These examples show how developers can use the Selenium Nodes’ extension points to add new functionality.

As a showcase it provides a very rudimentary sample integration of Appium, “an open source test automation framework for use with native, hybrid and mobile web apps. It drives iOS, Android, and Windows apps using the WebDriver protocol.”

Please note, that this repository does not contain the source code of the Selenium Nodes, which is not open sourced.

Extension points

The following extension points are currently provided by the Selenium Nodes:

• ws.palladian.nodes.selenium.plugin.WebDriverFactory — Allows to register new WebDriver implementations which can be selected in the WebDriver Factory node.

• ws.palladian.nodes.selenium.plugin.CapabilitySnippetSource — Allows to register JSON snippets for providing Selenium capabilities which can be selected in the WebDriver Factory node. Check the file /plugin/resources/AppiumCapabilitySnippets.json for the syntax.

• ws.palladian.nodes.selenium.plugin.LocatorFactory — Allows to add additional locators for the Find Elements node. See /plugin/src/com/seleniumnodes/devexamples/locators/ContainsTextLocatorFactory.java for an example implementation.

• Besides these, there’s also an example for a node implementation using KNIME’s org.knime.workbench.repository.nodes extension point in /plugin/src/com/seleniumnodes/devexamples/nodes. It makes use of the ws.palladian.nodes.selenium.types.WebDriverValue data value to interact with a mobile browser.

Development and build prerequisites

• Eclipse (preferably use Eclipse IDE for Java Developers)
  • M2Eclipse (already included if you use the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers)
• Maven

Directory structure

• feature/ — the feature definition
• plugin/ — the code for extensions
• pom.xml — parent and aggregation pom.xml for triggering the entire Tycho build
• targetplatform/ — the target platform definition for building and development
• testflowrunner/ — runs the test workflows; this requires to put an .epf file with a valid Selenium Nodes license in /testflowrunner/license.epf
• update/ — generates the update site for distribution

Setting up the development environment

1. Run the following command which downloads the required dependencies (Appium libraries and transitive dependencies) and puts them into plugin/lib:

   $ mvn clean initialize
   

2. In Eclipse, go to Import … → Existing Maven Projects, select the project’s root folder and import all subprojects. When you’re asked to install “m2e connectors”, do so. The projects will still show compile errors, as the dependencies cannot be resolved.

3. Set the target platform in Eclipse. Open the .target file in the targetplatform directory, wait until the progress bar for resolving the target platform has disappeared and click Set as Target Platform. After the progress has completed (takes some time depending on the internet connection), all compile errors should have disappeared.

4. Create a new launch configuration for an Eclipse Application and specify org.knime.product.KNIME_PRODUCT under Program to Run. Save, click Run and KNIME should start.

Building

The following command builds the entire project, creates an update site, runs unit tests and test workflows using Tycho:

$ mvn clean verify

The generated P2 update site can be found in /update/target/repository.

Running test workflows

For running test workflows, a valid Selenium Nodes license needs to be present. It is supplied to the testflow run as an exported Eclipse preferences file. To create this file, export your preferences from the KNIME application through File → Export Preferences… and put it in /testflowrunner/license.epf

---

Selenium Nodes for KNIME were created by seleniumnodes.com, 2015 — 2018.