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Tales from the dark side:browser controller testing

for webapps inWindows environment

Adrian Spineinetuality.ro

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Blackbox testingaka data testing, behavioral testing+ only tests functionality+ does not need server instrumentation+ easy to understand- sometimes performed by humans(and humans do not like it)- relatively hard to maintain- coverage of what ?

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Webapp testing before 2004-2005Mostly browser simulator(headless) patterneg. in Java:httpunithtmlunit...(inspired from junit/xunitcirca 1999 – Kent Beck,Erich Gamma)

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2005 – AJAX becomes de facto standard- Only HTML parsing is not good enough- Rhino ? No support for browser-specific objects- It's not easy to “rewrite” the browserSolution ?Browser controller – run a fullfledged browser instance anduse automation techniquesto control and check data

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Windows !+ massive user base+ IE still the dominant browser+ large variety of tools(commercial and open-source)+ OS automation APIs- mono-platform- makes you totally uncool- definitely will not improve your sex life

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Mainstream opensource & free toolsfor browser control/automationSamie (Perl)Pamie (Python)WatiR (Ruby)WatiN (.Net)AutoIT (Basic)...probably more(just Google it)

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But can you script any type of webapp ?Take Gmail, for instance – hard to blackbox(for sure it is instrumented for white box testing, debug,some REST equivalents, but that's not the point)●(relatively) unpredictable id values●very often, no names for elements●compose mail = a SPAN element, not a link●email body is written inside a ... BODY tag

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Yes you can.One of the solutions:●WatiNhttp://watin.sourceforge.net/●scripted with IronPythonhttp://www.codeplex.com/IronPython●spiced with WinForms.SendKeys... demo time !

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One more thing ...

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The Epiphany – testing is useless :)“Instead of wasting your time withtests, you'd better writebug-free code in the first place !”Customer, circa 2004(name withhold toprotect the innocents)