Grails: Functional Testing with Geb and Spock

Functional testing allows you to execute HTTP requests against your running application and verify if it’s performing the desired behavior.

Since Grails doesn’t ship with any direct support for functional testing (using Grails 2.2.4) I decided to use a common configuration of Geb with Spock for my testing needs. My configuration files are included below.  I had to modify BuildConfig.groovy and then include a separate configuration file for Geb.


BuildConfig.groovy

    repositories {
       mavenRepo "http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.seleniumhq.selenium/selenium-support"
    }

    def gebVersion = "0.9.2"
    def seleniumVersion = "2.35.0"

    dependencies {
        test "org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-chrome-driver:$seleniumVersion"
        test "org.spockframework:spock-grails-support:0.7-groovy-2.0"
        test "org.gebish:geb-spock:$gebVersion"
        test "org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-support:2.40.0"
    }

    plugins {
        test ":geb:$gebVersion"
        test (":spock:0.7") {
            exclude "spock-grails-support"
        }
    }

The tests and config files are stored in the test/functional folder of the main application. In the primary functional folder you can place your GebConfig.groovy file. There are various configuration options available to you. I prefer to use a very simple version, consisting of the following:

GebConfig.groovy

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver

reportsDir = "target/geb-reports"
driver = { new ChromeDriver() }

You will also need to install the ChromeDriver.  Info available here.

Once that’s done, you should define some Geb Pages that represent the corresponding gsp pages in your application. I typically define three key components: the url, the at closure, and the content closure. These elements will be used in your Spock Specification to navigate to the desired page in your application, verify that you are at the correct page and then interact with elements on the page that you define in the content closure.

Sample Page

import geb.Page

class LoginPage extends Page {

    static url = "login/auth"

    static at = { title == "Login" }

    static content = {
        loginForm { $("#loginForm") }
        loginButton { $("#loginButton") }
        registerLink { $("a[href*='register/index']") }
    }
}

Sample Spec

import geb.spock.GebReportingSpec
import spock.lang.Stepwise

@Stepwise
class LoginSpec extends GebReportingSpec {

    def "invalid login"() {
        given: "I am at the login page"
        to LoginPage

        when: "I am entering invalid password"
        loginForm.j_username = "[email protected]"
        loginForm.j_password = "ioguffwf"
        loginButton.click()

        then: "I am being redirected to the login page"
        at LoginPage
        !loginForm.j_username
        !loginForm.j_password
    }

    def "admin login"() {
        given : "I am at the login page"
        to LoginPage

        when: "I am entering valid username and password"
        loginForm.j_username = "[email protected]"
        loginForm.j_password = "me"
        loginButton.click()

        then: "I am being redirected to the homepage"
        at HomePage
    }
}

Spock specifications are very simple to read and should be written in such a way that it’s very clear what you are attempting to test and verify.  In this case, the LoginSpec, the specification has only two methods which are executed in order.  The first makes sure that when a user enters invalid login credentials they are redirected back to the log in page.  The second verifies that they are taken to the HomePage when the login succeeds.

In order to run your functional tests you can use the following commands:

grails test-app functional: -https
grails test-app -clean functional: LoginSpec -https

I add the -https flag because my application has support for https and I want to be able to test that functionality as well.

Happy testing!