Watir: Introduction: What is Watir

Introduction

"Watir" (pronounced water) stands for "Web Application Testing in Ruby". Watir is an automated test tool which uses the Ruby scripting language to drive the Internet Explorer web browser. Watir is a toolkit for automated tests to be developed and run against a web browser.

What Does Watir Work With?

Watir will drive web applications that are served up as HTML pages in a web browser. Watir will not work with ActiveX plugin components, Java Applets, Macromedia Flash, or other plugin applications. To determine whether Watir can be used to automate a part of a web application, right click on the object and see if the View Source menu option is available. If you can view the HTML source, that object can be automated using Watir.

Prerequisites

To use the tool, you should have a basic understanding of:

• HTML: This is a basic HTML tutorial.
• Programming: You should understand programming basics, including variables and simple control structures like "for" loops and "if" statements.
• Ruby: You do not need to know how to program in Ruby to get started with Watir, but you should learn some Ruby if you really want to get the most out of Watir
• Check out the Ruby Cheat Sheet for basic Ruby information.
• Microsoft has a toolbar for Internet Explorer which can be useful in navigating the DOM for pages that you're looking to automate.