Testing keyboard events in controls

[Alexandre (Shura) Iline]

Jonathan,

What you are suggesting seem to be good for unit test of controls code. 
You could create a unit test where you send an event and verify that the 
component is reacting appropriately.

In case of functional testing of applications build with JavaFX (or a 
bigger scale unit testing, for this matter), what you really have to do 
is to click with mouse. A control could have any number of listeners and 
so, when testing "functionally" you need simulate user actions as close 
as possible. We right now click with AWT robot, but could use any other 
robot, like I am saying in the other e-mail.

It is all possible and relatively simple to do with JemmyFX right now 
(for years, I should say). Yes, it is a little bit more complicated than 
doRightArrowPress() (it would be something like 
pressKey(KeyBoardButtons.RIGHT)), but not that complicated altogether.

If you want I will stop by your office and show you how to so that.

Shura

PS: Like it is mentioned in another e-mail, JemmyFX is planned to be 
opensourced _really_ soon.

On 01/03/2012 10:03 PM, Jonathan Giles wrote:
> Hi all (and happy new year!),
>
> ListView/TreeView/TableView have a heap of keyboard requirements that
> come in from UX. Keyboard event handling code is often fraught with
> complexity due to the many permutations. I'm frequently getting burnt
> due to subtle changes in this code causing unintended regressions.
>
> I finally decided to do something about this, and have thrown together a
> very simple set of APIs to make it possible to write simple unit tests
> that test keyboard navigation. It's all very lightweight so that it can
> easily run as part of the JavaFX engineering continuous build (which
> means it fails sooner, compared to SQE tests, or even worse - when it
> ends up in the hands of developers!). Additionally, it's all very
> primitive and proof-of-concept at this stage, and I am happy to refine
> (and relocate) the class to provide utility in this area if it doesn't
> duplicate existing functionality I'm unaware of. I'm also certain I'm
> missing some of the details on how best to do this, so feedback is welcome.
>
> Anywho, you can find the class in the rt/javafx-ui-controls project, in
> the test directory, in javafx.scene.control.KeyEventFirer. You can see a
> few unit tests that were used to flesh out the API in
> javafx.scene.control.ListViewKeyInputTest. I plan to add many more here,
> and for other controls, in the coming weeks and months.
>
> These are the key pointers:
> 1) When creating a KeyEventFirer, you must provide an EventTarget.
> Despite the scary name, all Nodes are EventTargets.
> 2) I put the ListView inside a group, which is placed in a scene, which
> itself is placed in a stage. I show() and hide() the stage as necessary
> (in the setup() / tearDown() methods). Without this, events don't fire.
> 3) I use the separate javafx.scene.control.KeyModifier class to provide
> zero or more keyboard modifiers (shift, alt, ctrl, meta) to the keyboard
> input. An enum might already exist for these modifiers, but I'm not sure...
> 4) I have convenience methods (for my needs, anyway) for
> up/down/left/right keyboard inputs, in the form of
> 'do*ArrowPress(KeyModifier... modifiers)' methods. I'm sure more can be
> added...
> 5) For all other keyboard input, you can use the 'doKeyPress(KeyCode
> keyCode, KeyModifier... modifiers)' method.
>
> Any feedback would be appreciated.
>