Automating QA on Flex Application

Question

I have a Flex Application that needs to be tested and our QA department is really adament on using some form of automated-testing tools like HP's QuickTest Pro (QTP). However, QTP requires that you write some custom code if you wish to automate some home-made components... Unfortunately, we have some 3rd-party components which we do not have the source code so we can't really the custom code without having the 3rd-party component's source code.

Is there any existing framework and/or tools that would allow me to automate testing without having to write custom code that could be used by a non-programmer (i.e. A QA guy which has no idea what a pointer is)

I've taken a quick-look at Flex-Monkey (A free open-source software) which seems to be a promising project, but it's still in it's infancy and I need something soon (i.e. Yesterday)

Any ideas?

Answer 1

• Take a look at Flex samples: Automation API sample applications
• Selenium has a Flex plugin
• RIATest looks promising as well

Haven't tried any of them personally. Just some googling.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, Flex/Flash automation just isn't very strong right now. QTP has a monopoly on the only "official" solution. Adobe needs to do more here :(

However, one automation tool is pretty interesting and completely sidesteps the traditional API mode of automation. Check out Eggplant, which uses graphical bitmaps to determine how/where/when to click on visual elements. This means your "scripts" are now text + bitmaps, but it also means it can test almost anything.

For full disclosure, I'm one of the Selenium Remote Control founders and have done a lot of work with Selenium and Flash automation in the past.

Answer 3

I know this post is a bit late in the game (almost a month), but if you haven't done so, check out FlexMonkey. I'm currently investigating Flex automation at work, and this is the most promising Flex test suite I've come across.

Note: Selenium Flex is only compatible with Selenium running on FireFox 2.x. It's not compatible with the latest beta which runs on FF 3. Because of this, I found it to be an inadequate solution.

Answer 4

Hi i am using selenium flex API integrated selenium RC.After launching the Flex application selenium fails to identify the fields inside the module box on the login page.

Eror trace:

com.thoughtworks.selenium.SeleniumException: ERROR: Error: The element 'logonId' was not found in the application

Can you please provide a solution on this?

Answer 5

(coming in really late in the game)

Another option now is Borland's SilkTest. They've recently added support for Flex and it seems to work pretty well.

My company tried a couple other options, including RIATest; but ended up using SilkTest because our QA dept. was already trained on it.

Answer 6

I've just released a new version of the SeleniumFlex API, bringing it up to 0.2.5.

This fixes release a lot of major issue and probably makes the API the best free alternative for Flex test automation. You can get it on sourceforge here: Selenium-Flex API

EDIT Update:

The project has moved to Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/sfapi/

Answer 7

AFAIK the following tools currently support Flex GUI automation (alphabetical order):

1. QuickTest Professional
2. Ranorex
3. Rational Functional Tester
4. RIATest
5. Selenium
6. SilkTest
7. TestComplete

ANY of the above will require you to "instrument" custom components to support full automation. However depending on how "custom" your components are you may find that you may not need to do anything, they will just be represented by their base classes. All built-in Flex components are already "instrumented".

Disclosure: I am a RIATest team member and am naturally biased to believe this is the best tool if you need Flex-only automation. It is the only tool that is focused on providing the best possible automation for Flex.

Answer 8

Ranorex might be interesting for you. The RanorexLoader enables automation of your flash/flex application without including the automation lib directly into your application.

And you can also capture/replay your UI tests, edit your actions and generate C#, VB.NET and IronPython code.

Here you find an example using the loader: http://www.ranorex.com/support/user-guide-20/flash-flex-testing.html#c2305

Answer 9

Hi, I am trying to automate things on Flex apps using UI Automation framework. Most of the things are possible with it, like enumerating the fields on the page, clicking on buttons, but I am not able to interact with text fields. Is there any special sdk or C# classes that I need to use to achieve this? Is there any standard sdk that's built for development in C# or C/C++ ?