Automated UAT/functional tests on Swing applications without source code

Question

Our team is now working on a big Swing application. Our job basically focuses on writing extensions to the existing framework. A typical job would be adding a new panel/ or adding a new tab with some extra functionalities that suit our need.

It seems FEST can help a lot in terms of unit-test our code. I am going to try it out this week. But the question here is if there is a way to do automated functional testing on the whole application. In another word, we do not only need to test our code but also the framework. After all, UAT is the most important part.

I am currently considering decompiling the jar files we got into source code then we can identify the components and then use FEST.

So, before I get started to give this approach a shot, I think I just ask for ideas and inspirations here. There must be people who have done similar things before. Would be nice if I could learn from the veterans who fought against this before .

Thanks,

Answer 1

In my view, Functional tests and unit tests are not well serviced by the same framework. For functional testing, I would recommend you look at QFTest, which understands Swing components, so you get a more stable test than a traditional click-and-keyboard playback mechanism, while still being at the functional level.