Restricted Natural Language Compiler

About the Project

This project contains the source code for the compiler of the restricted natural language for automated web testing. The compiler generates a script for libraries such as Selenium (support for other libraries is coming soon).

Example

Writing a library-agnostic script is straightforward.

The primary goals of this language are:

• Write library-agnostic scripts easily
• Readable like plain English
• Robust tests with Smart Web Element Locators

This simple script goes to the GitHub home page and tries to sign in with a dummy account.

githubSignIn {
   visit "https://github.com"
   click link with description "sign in present in the top right corner"
   check if image with description "GitHub logo" is displayed
   type "johndoe" on input with description "the username input field"
   type "secretpassword" on input with description "the password input filed"
   click button with description "sign in button"
}

Grammar

You can find below the LL(1) grammar of the language.

program     ::= test program | epsilon
test        ::= TEST_NAME { body }
body        ::= action body | epsilon
action      ::= click | check | type | visit
elem_type   ::= BUTTON | LINK | TEXT | IMAGE | INPUT

visit       ::= VISIT URL
click       ::= CLICK elem_type WITH_DESC NLD
check       ::= CHECK_IF elem_type WITH_DESC NLD state
type        ::= TYPE CONTENT ON elem_type WITH_DESC NLD

state       ::= DISPLAYED | HIDDEN

UPPER_CASE refers to terminals, lower_case refers to non-terminals.

We aim to support more actions in the future, however, the possible actions for the moment are: click, type (with visit and check being utility actions useful for testing).

Getting Started

Installation

Head to the releases page and download the latest release required version for your machine.

Extract the executable from the archive and add it to your PATH environment variable if you wish to use it as a global CLI tool on your system.

Using the compiler

$ rnlc -i in.txt -o out.js -t selenium

Compiled successfully

CLI arguments

$ rnlc --help

Restricted Natural Language Compiler
Usage: rnlc [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -h,--help                   Print this help message and exit
  -i,--input TEXT             Input file path
  -o,--output TEXT            Output file path
  -t,--target TEXT:{json,selenium,decompile} [selenium] 
                              Output target (json, selenium)
  --keep-xpath [0]            Keep XPATH instead of natural description (use this for testing purposes only)