Groovy Selenium WebDriver and SoapUI, part 1

I recently started a new job and a new project that called for me to make use of some things I have used separately over the past few years: combine SoapUI and Selenium into one framework, and make them work together – actually pass information from one to the other and back. While I am at it, I thought I would dust off some skillz from a box that I have not been in for some time: Eclipse and Java (I know the title says Groovy, I’ll get to that).

setting it all up on Windows

Of course at work they must run Windows.

1. Download and install (unpack?) Eclipse Classic 3.7, and run the Check for Updates. Mental note: gotta look at Eclipse for Testers, someday.
2. You need to give it Java: set JAVA_HOME and add %JAVA_HOME%\bin to the PATH. The first one that I tried – there were like half-dozen different versions on my machine – Eclipse complained that it is missing something called jvm.dll. Better get the real thing.
3. If you create a shortcut to launch Eclipse from your desktop, I found that it is a good idea to set the “Start in:” field to the same thing as what your workspace is.
   
4. Install SoapUI. This plugin needs some post-install work/commentary. If you also run the SoapUI IDE, especially a different version than what you just downloaded, the two will share one %userProfile%\soapui-settings.xml and there could be collisions; I would really like to find a way to relocate this file for the Eclipse plugin. Also, if you did not start Eclipse from your workspace – point 3 above – then you are going to 1) possibly overwrite your %userProfile%\default-soapui-workspace.xml, and 2) possibly pollute your Eclipse installation with three *.log files that SoapUI always creates on startup. Lastly: what used to be %SOAPUI_HOME%\bin\ext (external jars that should be added to soapUI classpath, for example JDBC drivers) is now %userProfile%\ext; another thing I would really like to relocate for the Eclipse plugin.
5. Install Groovy. The instructions say to use http://dist.codehaus.org/groovy/distributions/greclipse/snapshot/e3.7/, but if you read between the lines, you will notice this is the development build and as such it changes often, like almost daily. I used http://dist.springsource.org/release/GRECLIPSE/e3.7/ and it seems to have worked right out of the box.
6. Install SVN. I am not sure why Eclipse still comes pre-installed with CVS; does anyone still use this? When you’re done, make sure it worked. Normally there are problems.

setting it all up on Linux

Of course at home I run Linux. Surprisingly the Linux setup was a little more work.

1. I run Linux Mint 9 (Ubuntu Lucid Lynx – LTS); the repos have only Eclipse 3.5, which is way too outdated by now. Download and install (unpack?) Eclipse Classic 3.7, and run the Check for Updates.
2. LM9 comes set up with OpenJDK. Eclipse will run with this, however, when doing this last time, I ran into some problems, like various things kept crashing the JVM. Somewhere on the Eclipse site (unfortunately, I cannot find the link now) they suggested that you use genuine Sun Java. This is accomplished with sudo apt-get install sun-java-jdk, and then you need to modify your eclipse.ini to point to /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/bin/java.
3. Install SoapUI. I’m still having problems with this one.
4. Install Groovy. Use the same location as mentioned above, which makes it work right out of the box.
5. Install SVN. Fix the problems.

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