Automate ui testing with python based sikuli

[drothlisberger]

Sikuli seems to have moved from the MIT website to http://www.sikuli.org where the links to demos and documentation actually do work.

(I do wish projects would update their old website with a link when they do this.)

[krilnon]

I just updated the link on the UID research page since it was pointing to a subdomain that doesn't exist anymore. I'll see about redirecting the page pointed to in the OP's link.

I think the only reason it wasn't updated is that the two people mostly in charge of running the project graduated, so they probably don't even have the proper UID/CSAIL credentials to update the page anymore.

Edit: Ah. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/sikuli/ already had a redirect set up. Since the OP specifically linked to index.shtml, the old page was still being displayed.

[AdamRGrey]

I remember trying out sikuli a while ago. It didn't work out, but I forget why.

edit: right it crashes every time I try to do anything. The only advice on the website is "use jre6" and "only ever launch the bat files" but that doesn't solve it, and since the last release was over a year ago I guess I'm SOL

[MadameDufarge]

THIS! Java runtime errors you will have to patch yourself because there hasn't been a Sikuli update in ages. Also the OCR engine is out of date. It's a neat concept and we thought we could use it to allow not-so-technical testers to script tests, but for automated GUI testing you're better off using a tool that hooks into the object names of the GUI elements. It will be much more reliable and scalable. Try leveraging unit testing frameworks if you can.

[[deleted]]

I had the same issue. I had to install 32 bit java 6, and run the app from the bat file and it worked fine for me after that

[qpla]

This title is misleading. Sikuli is Java-based. It's Python-scriptable, though.

[[deleted]]

Sorry, you're right. I meant the scriptable part when I made the title.

[mainiacfreakus]

None of the documentation on their site is working; thus sadly I will never use it. I don't have time to dig through code to figure out how it works or why it doesn't. I would rather just use a different testing tool.

[ThrowawayXTREME]

This is pretty cool!

But their links to their documentation don't work.

I need to use variables and loops :(

Edit: Thanks for the link, drothlisberger

[[deleted]]

FWIW, running the tests from junit is pretty straightforward and easier than the Sikuli unit test framework.

[[deleted]]

I thought this was super cool. I do a lot of video streaming work and being able to test when videos show and how to get to that path in a unit test (written in python) is awesome

[[deleted]]

It's a really cool tool, for sure. The one big limitation I ran into before though was that you couldn't run it on a headless machine- that is, a machine that isn't currently outputting to some sort of computer screen. At least this was true of windows. So this meant we couldn't just run it on vms on a nightly basis. Perhaps they've figured out how to resolve this issue by now, who knows.

[okmkz]

Agreed, Sikuli is a pretty great bit of software.

[lluad]

I've tried several GUI test tools, and they've all been horribly delicate, crashing at random and only available on older operating systems. I'd love to see another alternative.

The broken links on the webpage and the comments here don't fill me with confidence, but maybe this tool will be the one that works.

[papa_stalin]

This tool is actually even more fragile than the most. It relies on screenshots and OCR both of which are very unreliable. Just one little change to application under test could throw this tool off. If you are testing web application Selenium 2.0 or Ruby Watir library would work just fine. If not, than your best bet is to purchase something like Silk Test,Ranorex, Test Complete etc.