.side-format specification

[j4x0]

Is there any (final) specification of the .side-format available yet? I would like to write a small interpreter for the .side files.

[corevo]

I'm planning on adding a few backwards compatible changes (a few new keys at project level).
Then I'll be naming it as version 1 of the .side format.

[beatngu13]

Any news regarding the .side format specification? I'm working on a test generator and I would like to create .side-based test suites/cases, so that I can use the Selenium IDE for playback, code export, etc.

[bcmoney]

Please don't make that switch to YAML if possible or still considering hah... I've developed a custom Java parser and it would be a pain to have to re-implement!!!

PM me on Selenium Slack @ bcop if anyone's interested in code for that, or I might just throw a blog article together... pretty basic stuff with Jackson... by simply adding comments with specific names we're able to ensure more durable selectors using Annotation-based selector lookups from SeleniumIDE recordings rather than putting any selectors directly in Page Objects.

[tourdedave]

A blog post would be great! We could cross-post it on the new SIDE blog, just send us a canonical link.

[corevo]

@bcmoney we won't be converting side to yml, what I was thinking about is if WebExtensions at some point would give filesystem access and CWD, we could break side to multiple files again, and have a "real" save mechanism, at which point saving multiple files makes more sense in yml.
Bottom line, as long as it's a single file it will stay json, if we find a way to break it into multiple files that would be backwards incompatible anyway, so in that case we will strongly consider moving to yml, or any markup language that is more approachable than json.

[bcmoney]

@corevo & @tourdedave sorry for the delay, couldn't find much time between my home demands with kids, teaching engagement I've got going on now, and my regular 9-5 gig... but here's the example Durable Selectors annotation and SIDE parser in Java:
http://bcmoney-mobiletv.com/blog/2019/04/27/selenium-ide-side-parser-for-durable-selectors/

I hope it could be of some use to folks, especially as I saw that Java export capability is possibly going into the next SeleniumIDE release? Cheers and thanks again for everything you do on this project!

[beatngu13]

Is there a reason why this has been closed? If there is no specification yet, is there anything we as an OSS community can do to help?