Chapter 6 - Creating Actions

In the previous chapter, we created steps. The steps call actions but currently, there are no actions to be called so let’s get into it.

1. Creating required actions files

The steps reference 3 actions files:

• HomeActions

• GeneralActions

• AboutActions

ArgoBEAST will automatically suffix the actions files with Actions, so you simply need to run the following:

argobeast create actions Home
argobeast create actions General
argobeast create actions About

You’ll notice the code within each file is very limited. Furthermore, you’ll notice they each reference page files that don’t exist yet:

from pages.general_page import GeneralPage

As with the steps, don’t panic! This tutorial is designed to create the files from the bottom up to help you understand the flow of the POM.

2. Home Action

Our first action is get_home_text() create this as below.

1. Open the file actions/home_actions.py

2. Replace the entire contents of the file with:

from argo_beast.common_actions.common_actions import CommonActions
from pages.home_page import HomePage


class HomeActions(CommonActions):
    PageClass = HomePage

    def __init__(self, page):
         super().__init__(page)

    def get_home_text(self):
        return self.page.get_home_text()

Note that we return the result here. While returning values is not typically necessary for given actions, in this tutorial we need to return the result so we can assert that it matches our expected value.

3. General Action

Next we need to write the code for navigate_to_page(page) this is a general action as it can be reused later to navigate to other parts of the website.

We’re also passing in the page argument - this will indicate which page we would like to visit.

1. Open the file actions/general_actions.py

2. Replace the entire contents of the file with:

from argo_beast.common_actions.common_actions import CommonActions
from pages.general_page import GeneralPage


class GeneralActions(CommonActions):
    PageClass = GeneralPage

    def __init__(self, page):
        super().__init__(page)

    def navigate_to_page(self, page):
        self.page.click_nav_link(page)

4. About Action

Lastly, we need to create the action that relates to our then step is_chris_visible().

Since Chris “Lives” on the About Us page - We’ll be creating this as an About Action.

We’re looking for this image.

1. Open the file actions/about_actions.py

2. Replace the entire contents of the file with:

from argo_beast.common_actions.common_actions import CommonActions
from pages.about_page import AboutPage


class AboutActions(CommonActions):
    PageClass = AboutPage

    def __init__(self, page):
        super().__init__(page)

    def is_chris_visible(self):
        return self.page.is_chris_visible()

As with our given step, we’re returning the result. This is extremely important for a then step as it allows us to assert the result of the test.

It is quite normal for an action to call a single page method. However, it is important to understand that actions are not limited to a single UI interaction and can orchestrate multiple interactions as needed.

For example, if you wanted to create a step such as When I find Chris, the corresponding action would need to call the navigate_to_page(page) method followed by the is_chris_visible() method to complete the full user workflow.