= WatirGrid

WatirGrid allows for distributed testing across a grid network using Watir.

== Getting Started
To install WatirGrid:
  gem install watirgrid

=== The Basics
WatirGrid is built on Rinda which implements the Linda distributed computing paradigm in Ruby. According to Wikipedia: “Linda is a model of coordination and communication among several parallel processes operating upon objects stored in and retrieved from shared, virtual, associative memory.”

In other words, WatirGrid allows multiple parallel processes to *_provide_* remote Watir objects in the form of tuple spaces across a grid network. This grid network is *_controlled_* by a ring server.

==== Key Terminology
The *controller* implements a repository of tuples (tuple space) that can be accessed concurrently. The controller also hosts a *ring* *server* which advertises these tuples across a grid network making it loosely coupled. Typically you will host one controller on a central machine. You will normally connect to this controller via a direct URI. You can also find this controller by its ring server, using a UDP broadcast for the ring server port.

The *providers* make remote Watir objects available to the tuple space hosted by the *controller*. Typically you will host one or many providers on your grid network, for example, each PC may become a single provider of a Watir tuple in the form of an Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or WebDriver browser object.

=== Simple Example

Pick a server to host the 'controller' for the ring server and execute the following:
  $ controller

This should find your external facing IP and start the corresponding DRb and Ring Servers:
  I, [2011-04-09 18:06:19 #1971]  INFO -- : Controller started on : druby://127.0.0.1:11235

On each client PC, host the 'provider' for the distributed (DRb) Watir objects
  $  provider -b ie -c druby://127.0.0.1:11235

This should find the recently started Ring Server and register a tuple for the Watir object:
  I, [2011-04-09 18:06:26 #1972]  INFO -- : Provider started on   : druby://127.0.0.1:11236
  I, [2011-04-09 18:06:26 #1972]  INFO -- : Controller found on   : druby://127.0.0.1:11235
  I, [2011-04-09 18:06:26 #1972]  INFO -- : Provider registered   : druby://127.0.0.1:11235

You will now be able to execute commands across remote browsers on your grid network.

e.g.
  require 'watirgrid'

  Watir::Grid.control(:controller_uri => 'druby://127.0.0.1:11235') do |browser, id|
    puts "My remote browser id is #{id}"
    browser.goto("http://www.google.com")
    browser.text_field(:name, 'q').set("watirgrid")
    browser.button(:name, "btnI").click
  end

You may wish to host the controller and providers on different machines in a real scenario. You can specify things like server hostnames, ports and access control lists for each of the different types of servers. For more help see:
  $  controller --help
  Usage: controller [options]
  Specific options:
      -H, --drb-server-host [HOST]       Specify DRb Server interface to host on
      -d, --drb-server-port [PORT]       Specify DRb Server port to listen on
      -h, --ring-server-host [HOST]      Specify Ring Server interface to host on
      -r, --ring-server-port [PORT]      Specify Ring Server port to listen on
      -a, --access-control-list [ACLS]   Specify a comma separated Access Control List
      -l, --log-level [LEVEL]            Specify log level {DEBUG|INFO|ERROR}
          --help                       Show this message

  $  provider --help
  Usage: Usage: provider -b BROWSER_TYPE [options]
  Specific options:
      -b, --browser-type TYPE          Specify browser type to register {ie|firefox|safari|webdriver}
      -c, --controller-uri [URI]       Specify Controller URI e.g. druby://127.0.0.1:11235
      -H, --drb-server-host [HOST]     Specify DRb Server interface to host on
      -d, --drb-server-port [PORT]     Specify DRb Server port to listen on
      -h, --ring-server-host [HOST]    Specify Ring Server host to connect to
      -r, --ring-server-port [PORT]    Specify Ring Server port to broadcast on
      -a, --access-control-list [ACL]  Specify a comma separated Access Control List
      -l, --log-level [LEVEL]          Specify log level {DEBUG|INFO|ERROR}
          --help                       Show this message

== Copyright

Copyright (c) 2009-2011 Tim Koopmans. See LICENSE for details.