Integration Testing for a Web App

Question

I want to make a full integration testing for a web application. I want to test many things like AJAX, positioning and presence of certain phrases and HTML elements using several browsers. I'm seeking a tool to do such automated testing.

On the other hand; this is my first time with integration testing, is there any specific recommendations when doing such testing? Any tutorial as well?

(As a note: My backend code is done using Perl, Python and Django.)

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you need to do full testing including exploiting browser features like AJAX then I would recomend Selenium. Selenium launches a browser and controls it to run the tests.

It supports all the major platforms and browsers. Selenium itself is implemented in Java but that is not really an issue if it is being used to test a web application through its user interface.

Selenium tests are a sequence of commands in an HTML table, the supported commands are in well documented. There is also an IDE implemented as a Firefox plugin that can be used to record and run tests. However the test scripts created in the IDE can be used to drive tests against any of the supported browsers.

Answer 2

I would also recommend Selenium. It got a really nice Firefox Plugin, that you can use to create your integration tests.

Answer 3

Selenium is a very good tool to automate browser testing

Since you mentioned Ruby in your tags, I also recommend Webrat which is a nice in-browser testing solution in Ruby.

Answer 4

You can also control selenium using Selenium-RC's python binding. For example:

from selenium import selenium
selenium = selenium("localhost", 4444, "*firefox",
            "http://www.google.com/")
selenium.start()
selenium.open("/") # open google.com
selenium.type("q", "selenium rc")
selenium.click("btnG")
selenium.wait_for_page_to_load("30000")
selenium.failUnless(selenium.is_text_present("Results * for selenium rc"))
selenium.stop()

Answer 5

Selenium is a good way to go. For using it with Perl then use the Test::WWW::Selenium CPAN module.

Here is one example from its pod:

use WWW::Selenium;

my $sel = WWW::Selenium->new( host => "localhost", 
                              port => 4444, 
                              browser => "*iexplore", 
                              browser_url => "http://www.google.com",
                            );

$sel->start;
$sel->open("http://www.google.com");
$sel->type("q", "hello world");
$sel->click("btnG");
$sel->wait_for_page_to_load(5000);
print $sel->get_title;
$sel->stop;

And here are some additional links which maybe helpful:

• Selenium + Perl wiki
• Automating browser activities using Selenium
• Using WWW::Selenium To Test Or Automate An Ajax Website

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Answer 6

Here's another option, all written in Python and cross browsers for running AND recording tests: Windmill

Answer 7

In this article, Noah Gift does a good job presenting three main alternatives for web app integration testing: Windmill, Selenium and Twill. Twill doesn't do Javascript, so that leaves Selenium and Windmill as your main possibilities; Gifts shows enough about what using each of them means, so you can choose.

One thing Gift doesn't mention is that Selenium is much more popular -- that's not obvious if you just web search each of the terms windmill and selenium, but that's because each gets (different numbers of;-) false hits. [windmill javascript] gives 325k hits, [selenium javascript] gives 1.2M hits, and this ratio is more representative. Anyway, the point is that, if you find them both equally easy and powerful enough for your needs, so that you have a hard time choosing one, then picking selenium (i.e., going with the crowd) may have advantages (more experts around, e.g. on SO to answer questions;-) wrt picking the somewhat less popular alternative.

Answer 8

Another great tool for browser testing which is built as Ruby library and uses Ruby for scripting is Watir. There is also a firefox plugin for watir just like selenium called
Firewatir hosted on google code

Answer 9

TestPlan is a great tool for general purpose web testing. It provides both a display-less backend and Selenium. The Selenium backend should take care of testing in all the popular browsers. It also has its own scripting language which makes it quick to write and test, though Java can also be used.

For example, this goes to a page and submits a search form and checks that it found the correct result.

GotoURL http://myapp.com/

SubmitForm with
  %Params:search% some term
end

Check //div[@id='results'][contains(text(),'some term']