In the past I've been asked to test a complex Qlikview Project with lots of variables, events and macros.
Manual testing was becoming too complex and boring, so I helped adding a bit of rspec to the mix.
I've been using rspec to test almost everything in the past few years and this was an intriguing new testing challenge.

step 0 - install the tools

• install Qlikview Desktop 11
• install ruby (my swiss-army integration tool of choice)
• install bundler gem install bundler
• create the project folder

mkdir rspec_for_qlik

• create a file named Gemfile into the project folder with the following content:

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'ruby-ole'

group :development, :test do
  gem 'rspec'
end

• install all the dependencies

cd rspec_for_qlik && bundle install

• create the project directories mkdir src && mkdir lib && mkdir spec

step 1 - build a small automation lib

Before even starting to build the actual tests, I wrote a small DRY library.
It's very easy to integrate win32 ole api with ruby (and even more easily java libraries with jruby indeed) as you can see in the following example:

    # coding: utf-8
    require 'win32ole'
    
    class QlikDoc < Object
      attr_accessor :qv_app, :qv_doc
    
    public
      def init()
        @qv_app = WIN32OLE.new("QlikTech.QlikView")
      end
    
      def open_doc(file_path)
        @qv_doc = qv_app.openDoc(file_path)
      end
    
      def close_doc()
        @qv_doc.closeDoc()
      end
    
      def quit()
        @qv_app.quit()
      end
    
      def set_variable(variable_name, variable_value)
        qv_variable = @qv_doc.Variables(variable_name)
        qv_variable.SetContent(variable_value, true)
      end
    
      def get_variable(variable_name)
        qv_variable = @qv_doc.Variables(variable_name)
        qv_variable.GetContent.String
      end
    
      def set_selection(field_name, field_value)
        @qv_doc.Fields(field_name).Select(field_value)
      end
    
      def clear_selection(field_name)
        @qv_doc.Fields(field_name).Clear
      end
      
      def press_button(object_id)
        qv_button=@qv_doc.GetSheetObject(object_id)
        qv_button.press   
      end
    end

save the example above in a file called lib\qlik_doc.rb

step 2 - setup a simple test

Let's create our first test.
First of all create or copy the qvw file you want to test in src\testbed.qvw.
n.b. in order to pass the test, the testbed.qvw file must contain a variable named testbed_variable

Next create a rspec test in spec\qlik_spec.rb with the following content:

    # coding: utf-8
    require './lib/qlik_doc'
    
    RSpec.describe QlikDoc, :type => :model do  
      before(:all) do
        @q = QlikDoc.new
        @q.init()
      end
    
      before(:each) do
        @q.open_doc("#{Dir.pwd}/src/testbed.qvw") 
      end
    
      it "should set and read a variable named testbed_variable" do
      	@q.set_variable('testbed_variable','successful')
      	expect(@q.get_variable('testbed_variable')).to eq('successful')
      end
    
      after(:each) do
        @q.close_doc()
      end  
    
      after(:all) do
        @q.quit()
      end
    
    end

step 3 - run the test!

To run the test and check the result it's a matter of typying rspec.
The output should be

Finished in 2.98 seconds (files took 0.45292 seconds to load)
1 example, 0 failures

post scriptum

All the files above are available in github
In the git project there is no testbed.qvw file. You will find, instead, a folder called testbed-prj, containing the "xml" content of the original file. In order to create the correct testbed.qvw file, just create a new and empty qvw file named testbed.qvw, open it and save it (under the hood, Qlikview will load the content from the testbed-pro folder...).

notes

front image by Mars Hill Church Seattle