Is there a way to test Comet applications without a running browser?

Question

I'm trying to connect to an application that uses Comet and is pretty heavy on Javascript and Comet. I've gone as far as I can go in Firebug, HTTP Header examination and am trying to see what's coming over the wire by writing something using Ruby Mechanize.

However, since I have no client run-time, my approach is to mimic the HTTP requests going back and forth (doing this using Ruby Mechanize). I'm looking at the logs and comparing them to LiveHTTPHeader output and it's very similar but the server isn't responding (I don't have access to the server side code).

Are there tools that could help? Has anyone tried simulating the DOM and Javascript runtime using something like Rhino or is that just asking for pain?

Answer 1

The only sane way I've found to run automated tests on web apps involving substantial Javascript (w/ or w/o Comet) is selenium rc -- basically, mechanizing/automating a real browser from your favorite programming language. (There may be other approaches with a similar architecture, but Selenium is popular and it's what I'm familiar with). Simulating browser's DOM and JS is just too painful -- been there, tried that, failed miserably;-).