nexial-core 1.3 (2018-07-06)

Release 1.3

2018-07-06

General

• upgraded to Kotlin 1.2.50.
• improved log file information, to be in sync with almost ALL console output messages.
• fixed logic when nexial.outputToCloud is set to true, but Nexial Cloud Integration is not properly set up.
• when nexial.outputToCloud is set to true, Nexial will re-upload log files to S3 at the end of the execution. So that the log file will have the complete log information.
• fixed logic to determine chrome log location and file name.
• output spreadsheet now includes link to multiple log files for completeness.
• fixed error that was preventing execution summary (JSON) to upload to cloud storage.
• Nexial Installer for Linux, Mac and Windows is now available. For the usage, read Nexial Installer README
• [PR #6])(https://github.com/nexiality/nexial-core/pull/6) bin/nexial.cmd exits with the actual exit code from Nexial.
• fix for linux to use which instead of which --read-alias when resolving location of browser execution. This should resolve problem when running Nexial in TTY.
• fixed commons.sh to properly handle situation where a browser can be found in multiple locations.

Built-in Function

• fixed parsing logic to honor escaping conflicting characters such as $, (, ) and |. These characters are considered as conflict since they are used to define built-in functions.

Event Notification

• due to the close in time between start of an execution, the first script and the first scenario, the TTS notification has been modified to opt for speak-and-wait (previously speak-no-wait) strategy.

Nexial Expression

[CSV expression]

• added maxColumns as an optional configuration during parse() to instruct Nexial to allocate beyond the default max columns (512) in order to process very wide CSV file. Note that changing this value will have both memory footprint and performance implication. This setting is usually not needed.
• fixed CSV expression to accurately parse the match items in a “is” or “in” filter. For example, filter(Name in [Johnny|Sammy|Manny]). Refer Documentation for Nexial filter for details.

System variables

• added new System variable - nexial.web.preemptiveAlertCheck to opt out for pre-emptive checks of alert,confirm or prompt (JavaScript) dialogs during web automation. This pre-emptive checks are turned on by default for convenience. However for performance reason one might opt to turn off this check (which DOES take time), esp. when automating a web app that does not generate JavaScript dialog (alert, confirm or prompt). Our simple tests show that switching this System variable to false (default is true) yields about 15-20% time improvement.
  • note that if this System variable is set to true or undefined, any harvested alert text would be available via the nexial.lastAlertText System variable.
• System variable nexial.safari.cleanSession removed since safari now ALWAYS open clean session.

web commands

• shipped with Selenium v3.13.0. Significant changes include:
  • Exposing a RemoteWebDriverBuilder which can be used to construct instances of selenium when talking to servers that speak the w3c protocol.
  • Fixed loading of Grid hub and node config files.
  • Fixed noProxy handling in Grid.
  • Added bindings for custom ChromeDriver commands (GET_NETWORK_CONDITIONS, SET_NETWORK_CONDITIONS and DELETE_NETWORK_CONDITIONS) that allows client code to utilize built-in throttling functionality. (#3479)
  • Minimised data being encoded as JSON when serialising Java objects.
  • EventFiringWebDriver now fires events before and after getText and implements HasCapabilities.
• shipped with geckodriver 0.21.0 for Firefox browser. Significant changes include:
  • minimum recommended Firefox changed: Firefox 57 (or greater)
  • (added) Support for the chrome element identifier from Firefox.
  • (added) The unhandledPromptBehavior capability now accepts accept and notify, dismiss and notify, and ignore options.
  • (changed) Firefox will now be started with the -foreground and -no-remote flags if they have not already been specified by the user in moz:firefoxOptions.
    • -foreground will ensure the application window gets focus when Firefox is started, and -no-remote will prevent remote commands to this instance of Firefox and also ensure we always start a new instance.
  • (changed) WebDriver commands that do not have a return value now correctly return {value: null} instead of an empty dictionary.
  • (changed) The HTTP server now accepts Keep-Alive connections.
  • (changed) Firefox remote protocol command mappings updated.
  • (changed) Overhaul of Firefox preferences. Preferences marked as deprecated in before Firefox v57 are now removed.
  • (fixed) Force use of IPv4 network stack (even when localhost resolves to IPv6 address).
  • (fixed) geckodriver failed to locate the correct Firefox binary due to directory names.
  • (fixed) When stdout and stderr is redirected by geckodriver, a bug prevented the redirections from taking effect.
• shipped with IE Driver 3.12.0.4 for Internet Explorer browser. Most significant changes (since 3.9) - there are A LOT - are:
  • (v3.12.0.4) Use elementFromPoint for IE driver in determining obscured elements. This is in direct violation of the algorithm specified in the W3C WebDriver Specification, but it fixes a class of IE-specific bugs that present themselves when using elementsFromPoint. This is used to shortcut the use of elementsFromPoint if it is not necessary.
  • (v3.12.0.4) Added additional logging to IE driver for setting window focus.
  • (v3.12.0.4) Updated IE driver to use SendInput for a single input at a time. The IE driver uses the Windows SendInput API when a session is initiated with the requireWindowFocus capability.
  • (v3.12.0.3) Refactored IE waiting for page load on click. This commit restores some previously lost functionality for waiting for a page to load on click of an element. The race condition for detecting when a navigation is started is mitigated by a short wait (50ms) on the click.
  • (v3.12.0.3) Made “eager” page load strategy not wait for frame navigation to be completed before returning.
  • (v3.12.0.2) Updated to better support using CreateProcess API for launching IE.
  • (v3.12.0.1) Update close window command to return list of remaining window handles, for consistency with the W3C WebDriver Specification. Unfortunately this change incurred a performance hit due to wait time required to collect the proper list of window handles.
  • (v3.12.0.0) Added alert text to error response for unexpected alerts. This is to maintain consistency with other implementations.
  • (v3.12.0.0) Added checking of variant type for returns from JavaScript execution.
  • (v3.11.1.6) Updated find element by link text atom to handle non-breaking spaces. The WebDriver W3C Specification states that when finding by link text, the text of a link element () should be trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace after calling getVisibleText on the element before comparison. Links with text that contains leading or trailing non-breaking spaces (&nbsp) were having the non-breaking spaces converted to regular spaces, but not trimmed after the fact. This commit corrects that oversight.
  • (v3.11.1.6) Made IE cookie expiration times integer values, as dictated by the W3C WebDriver Specification.
  • (v3.11.1.6) Modified to throw exception clicking on file upload elements in IE. The WebDriver W3C Specification states that if a user attempts to click a file upload element (), an error should be returned. This is consistent with the intended behavior of WebDriver from the start, which is that to upload a file, one should use sendKeys, not click() on the input element. This now codifies that behavior with returning an error.
  • (v3.11.1.5) Initial implementation of taking element screenshots.
  • (v3.11.1.4) Fixed finding child elements to return proper error if parent element is stale. Fixes issue #5700.
  • (v3.11.1.3) Fixed detection of obscured elements when top element is not displayed. Fixes issue #5668.
  • (v3.11.1.1) Separated out detection of focusable elements for sendKeys in IE. Allows separate error messages for attempting to send keys to a non-focusable element. Also fixes sending keystrokes to <option> elements by forwarding the detections to the parent element.
  • (v3.11.1.1) Fixed obscured element detection in IE for elements in frames.
  • (v3.11.1.1) Added IsFocusable method to IE driver Element class.
  • (v3.11.1.1) Added Protected Mode boundary crossing detection mechanism in IE. When a Protected Mode boundary is crossed by navigation (entering or exiting Protected Mode), the existing browser instance is destroyed and a new one created in its place by Interent Explorer. This commit adds detection for when a browser instance is being closed, but without an explicit call to the WebDriver close() or quit() methods.
  • (v3.11.1.0) Updated all C++ projects for the IE driver to use the Windows 8.1 SDK. No longer compatible with XP.
  • (v3.11.0.0) Added additional logging to new session command.
  • (v3.11.0.0) Added detection of intercepted element clicks to IE. This brings the IE driver into alignment with the Chrome and Firefox (geckodriver) drivers, in that it detects when an element attempting to be clicked on is covered in the z-order by another element.
  • (v3.10.0.2) Fixed clear element command to handle cases where the element’s parent document is undefined.
  • (v3.10.0.2) Fixed sending keystrokes with native events disabled.
  • (v3.10.0.1) Updated clear element command handler to return W3C compliant errors for IE.
  • (v3.10.0.1) Updated IE error response to be spec compliant for sendKeys
  • (v3.10.0.1) Fixed IE cookie retrieval for IE 10 and 11.
  • (v3.10.0.1) Revamped handling of modifier keys. The IE driver is now able to distinguish between the left and right modifier keys (Shift, Control, Alt) on the keyboard.
  • (v3.10.0.1) Modified mouse event handling to match W3C Specification.
    THIS IS A POTENTIAL BREAKING CHANGE.
    The simulation of mouse movement for the actions command now conforms to the W3C WebDriver Specification for mouse movement. This means that offsets in elements are now measured from the center of the element instead of the top-left, which was the previous behavior. Additionally, attempting to move the mouse pointer outside the browser view port will result in a “mouse movement out of bounds” error.
  • (v3.10.0.1) Modified processing of pause actions in keyboard action sequences. The vast majority of use of pause actions in a keyboard action sequence are used to synchronize the entire action chain with other (mouse) action sequences. To allow the driver to properly synchronize the input sequences, the driver will now ignore the duration property of pause events in keyboard action sequences.
  • (v3.10.0.1) Fixed sending keystrokes outside the Basic Multilingual Plane. This allows emoji and other Unicode characters that are represented by surrogate pairs in UTF-16 to be sent to IE.
  • (v3.10.0.1) Fixed getElementProperty to return proper data type. Previously, the getElementProperty command would coerce the property value to a string. This is not correct behavior as specified in the W3C spec.
  • (v3.9.0.4) Updated get active element command in IE to handle missing body element. This change is required to make the driver compliant with the W3C WebDriver Specification.
  • (v3.9.0.4) Changed new session command in IE to allow empty timeouts list. This change is required to make the driver compliant with the W3C WebDriver Specification.
  • (v3.9.0.4) Fixed IE driver element detection for user-executed JavaScript. This commit fixes a corner case where elements added to the known element repository via non-JavaScript means were not being properly detected when the same element was located via user-executed JavaScript.
  • (v3.9.0.3) Refactored user input simulation code in IE driver. This commit breaks out the three modes of user input simulation (native events using SendMessage, native events using SendInput, simulated events using JavaScript) into separate classes, making it easier to debug. Additionally, this commit removes the code for enabling persistent hovers.
  • (v3.9.0.3) Added support allowing binding to IPv6 loopback in IE driver. When no host and no list of whitelisted IP addresses are specified, IEDriverServer.exe now bind to both the IPv4 & IPv6 loopback adapters.
  • (v3.9.0.2) Reduced overall wait interval time.
  • (v3.9.0.2) Shortened IE sleep interval looping for JavaScript execution completion. This prevents excessively long delays for Selenium commands executed via executeScript, like submit(), isDisplayed(), or getAttribute().
  • (v3.9.0.2) Moved double-click detection logic inside InputManager for IE. This also will prevents unnecessary expensive sleeps in the click command handler.
  • (v3.9.0.2) Updated to better handle non-US keyboards in sendKeys. In the transition to support the W3C specification, using sendKeys on non-US keyboard layouts got broken.
  • (v3.9.0.1) Made JavaScript execution asynchronous for executeScript in IE. Prior to this change, the execution of JavaScript via the executeScript method was synchronous. This would mean that if the script passed into the driver called the JavaScript alert(), confirm(), or prompt() functions, the WebDriver code would hang until the dialog was manually dismissed. Moving this to asynchronous execution allows the driver to be compliant with the W3C WebDriver Specification, that mandates that user prompts triggered by executeScript should be able to be handled by the WebDriver alert handling functions. However, this spec compliance comes at several costs.
    
    • The first cost is complexity. The IE driver uses COM interfaces to communicate with Internet Explorer. COM is inherently single-threaded, and requires a fair amount of manipulation to allow accessing the objects on separate threads. This leads to requiring a fairly complex system of communication and synchronization between the threads to give the illusion of a synchronous script execution.
    • The second cost is performance. Because of the need for synchronization, this change may introduce a performance hit in the IE driver. This is unfortunate, but unavoidable. The benefit of having user-initiated JavaScript not block and hang WebDriver code far outweighs the relatively small performance hit introduced.
    • Finally, there is every chance that, despite all efforts to the contrary, it’s possible that there are new regressions introduced by this change. Multiple test suites have been run using this change, and none have failed thus far due to the changes herein. Claims that this change is causing a specific failure should be accompanied by a full test case, or issues reported against this change will be summarily closed.
  • (v3.9.0.0) Removed clearing of known element cache on document navigation. This was causing incorrect NoSuchElementException when StaleElementReferenceException was expected.
  • (v3.9.0.0) Updated IE driver alert detection to get alert text from “repeat” alerts. This commit should allow the proper retrieval of alert text from IE alerts that happen “repeatedly.” That is, those that have the checkbox stating “Do not let this page create any more alerts.” Unlike standard Windows alerts, these use controls that are only available via Active Accessibility to retrieve the text. The driver now is able to detect and retrieve text from these types of alerts.
• code fix to avoid exception in web » selectWindowByIndex(index)
• preliminary support for Electron app automation. To use this,
  1. set nexial.browser to electron.
  2. set nexial.browser.electron.appLocation to the path of the target Electron application binary/executable.
     • most web commands should work. The following commands are currently not supported (by either Electron or the underlying WebDriver):
       • web » maximizeWindow()
       • web » resizeWindow(width,height)
       • web » goBack()
       • web » goBackAndWait()
• update to latest version of chromedriver built for electron app.
• update Edge WebDriver to version: 6.17134
  • Edge version supported: 17.17134
• update code to initialize firefox and geckodriver; no more deprecated calls.
  • when checking for browser and webdriver readiness, treat “unexpected end of stream on Connection” and “Software caused connection abort: recv failed” NOT as fatal so that Nexial can avoid opening new browser (as attempts to revive from webdriver crash).
  • added settings to firefox to favor tab over windows.
  • added settings to firefox to allow windows to be closed via JavaScript.