Quickstart

To use dogtail please ensure you have installed the requisite software listed on the Downloads page.

Once logged in to the desktop verify that accessibility is enabled.

To enable accessibility in GNOME please do the following:

(from the panel menu)
- Go to the desktop Preferences menu -> Preferences -> Accessibility -> Assistive Technology Support
- Ensure that the "Enable assistive technologies" checkbox is checked
OR

(from the terminal) Run the following command:

gconftool-2 --set --type bool /desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility true

(from GConf Editor) Navigate to /desktop/gnome/interface and check the accessibility checkbox.
Restart your session for the changes to take effect.

Then check out dogtail in action! Links to example scripts are available on the Media page.

Workflow Tutorials

Coming soon! Tutorials on how one might use dogtail as a Tester, Developer and Doc Writer.

API Documentation

Happy dogs need happy docs! You can fetch the HappyDoc API Documentation here.

Procedural API

The procedural API has been designed to be used for blackbox functional testing of desktop applications. Efforts have been made to make it simple enough for use by script authors with basic Python experience while still being powerful and flexible enough for general desktop GUI automated testing. If you are new to python or need to perform traditional blackbox functional testing, we suggest writing scripts against this API. The main module to study is dogtail.procedural.

Object-Oriented API

The OO API provides the muscle for dogtail. It has been designed to allow a more fine-grained control over interaction with accessibles and easy customizability through subclassing. Application developers may find it useful to use the OO API to drive their applications to particular states for testing and debugging. Application wrapper modules can be written to easily "roll up" functionality for debugging purposes. A good module to study for this approach is dogtail.tree.