Recording Flash automation with FlexMonkium

Gorilla Logic created FlexMonkey — a test automation tool for Flex. Now they’ve added FlexMonkium which allows you to use FlexMonkey with Selenium to seamleslys automate the web browser and Flash with a single API.  There’s also a plugin for Selenium IDE that allows you to record.

To install FlexMonkium, you have to go to the GorillLogic website and register as a user, and give them your email address and assorted other personal info.  I had several errors and timesouts going through this process, but eventually got registered.  The I could download the FlexMonium zip file.  I unzipped this and dragged the XPI onto my Firefox browser window (with Selenium IDE 1.0.10 already installed) to install the plugin.  It would be much easier to just have the plugin available directly on their site.  The, after restarting Firefox, I could launch Selenium and under Options->FlexMonkium, I had to specify the full path to the FlexMonkium console.  This is not included in the zipfile.  It’s a separate download that requires you to have Adobe AIR installed (It’s an AIR app, but also, the only way to download it is over Flash with AIR already installed and in the PATH — Tweetdeck also makes this error.)

You then have to set up FlexMonkium with a Flex project, and then copy the automation_monkey-X.X.swc to your project lib folder and rename it automation_monkey.swc (X.X corresponds to your Flex SDK version)

Convoluted, but it works!

Firefox plugins

A new job means a new computer, which means lots of setup. I won’t go into details (right now) for everything, but here’s a list of Firefox plugins I “needed”:

Firebug
Web Developer
Toggle Web Developer
Console2
JSON View
Poster
XPath Checker
DOM Inspector
ScreenGrab
ColorZilla
Pixel Zoom
Pixel Perfect
Measure It
Smoothe Wheel
Selenium IDE
FlexMonkium

Note to self:
Don’t try to compile Firefox from scratch again if you can help it.