[Chennaipy] Minutes of the meeting - Oct 25

[harsha sunder]

Minutes of meeting Oct 25

The first talk of the evening was given by Krishnan in python Test
Automation.he explained how python could be used for all types of testing -
web testing,gui testing,functional testing, unit testing, embedded testing
etc. He explained how python was a good choice for test automation, because
it allowed you to use the same language for all the different types of
testing, in contrast to  specific automation test software , each
specialised in  one type of testing, and each requiring a different tool
language to be learnt.

He then went on to list useful python modules for testing, some of which
are
shutil - for copying files quickly
subprocess - for running another process from your program, and monitoring
its status, getting and using its output
pexpect - for interacting with console applications
logging - for logging, but where u can specify different levels of errors,
like debug, error, warning and critical
unit test- for writing unit tests
regex -
pep8 and pylint - for checking if your source code confirms to python
coding standards
traceback and pdb - standard python debugging libraries to step through
your code.
pywinAuto - for automating windows tasks, including installations !

Two other interesting things mentioned were image based automation and the
difference between unittests and integration tests .
In image based automation you automate windows tasks like clicking a
shortcut, emptying the recycle bin by getting the object you want to
automate by searching for it through its image, rather than through the
windows api or some other dictionary/list.
Unit tests are where you check each and every part of the code seperately
for its functionality, error conditions etc. Integration testing is where
you check one module of the code for its ability to work properly with
other outside objects. Each module then acts like a black box, and you are
more concerned about its working with other modules rather than how the
module itself works ie: whats inside the black box


The second talk was given by Rengaraj on Docopt. Doc opt is a python module
used to generate an interface for your command line application. it also
automatically generates a parser for it. I had some confusion on where this
module could be used, so i went back home and checked it out. Basically,
you can use it to easily create  a command line program where you can give
 options like -v,-x -u,-uv, following your command. The great thing about
doc opt is that it will then create a dictionary with your options as keys
and the options the user put as values to those keys, so that you can
easily find out the user input commands were. Its much much easier than
other similar functional modules like opto parse. The only thing to
remember with docopt is that the usage format has to be in the POSIX format
for it to work

The last talk was given by VijayKumar on a problem he solved at his company
using python and some embedded hardware.He explained how at his company
they were faced with the problem of keeping track of who had borrowed
common resources and of getting the person who had borrowed it to return
the resource after he/she had used it.After trying simple solutions like
keepig a notebook, reminding people, and findsing that they did not
work,they finally decided to use a tech solution. They used an rfid reader
and put an rfid tag on each resource and linked it to a server so that they
would know who had borrowed which resource. Python was used to interface
and talk to the hardware, which included a reed switch, rfid reader, and
the server. The python framework used was twisted, and one interesting
thing was the idea of an event driven framework, instead of a blocking
read/write framework. It was nice to see the actual hardware ,software and
also a video of the system in action! Vijay also showed us the state
machine of the system which showed the various states of the system and how
it changed depending on the users actions.



Other info
No. of attendees: 32
Venue Coordinator: Shrinivasan
Networking over Tea, Sponsor: Clay Labs
Marketing: Krishnan Shankar, Prasanna Venkadesh, Chintu Philips,
Shrinivasan
Photographs: Krishnan Shankar, Kenash Kanagaraj
Minutes: Harsha
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