Best automated testing tool for web applications?

Question

Having repeatable automated tests of web applications lets one detect regression with very little ongoing labour cost (the main cost being writing the test scripts up front). However there seems to be a bewildering array of such tools available. We used eValid in the past but now use Sahi.

Ideally we'd like a tool for which IT-literate but non-development staff can write and maintain the scripts.

What product do you recommend, and how much experience of that product is your recommendation based on?

Answer 1

Take a look at Canoo WebTest, its easy to use and configure.

Answer 2

I've had a bit of experience with Selenium and found it very easy to use (using the Selenium IDE firefox plugin). Once scripts have been written they can be run in a web browser (using the testrunner) or can be run across multiple browsers using the Selenium RC product. It's also all open source software. http://selenium.openqa.org/

Answer 3

I like Selenium ( http://selenium.openqa.org/ )

It´s a free solution and you can use the Selenium IDE do create tests.

Just navigate in the site and record the test.

Answer 4

Fast and simple iMacros addon for Firefox.

They are simple macros with a little bit of validation, but do the trick for simple regression test.

Answer 5

Check Watir. It's free and fun to use. It's Ruby-based browser scripting package. Requires some technical knowledge though all basic functions are self-explanatory.

Example:

require 'watir'
require 'test/unit'

class TC_article_example < Test::Unit::TestCase

  def test_search
    ie = Watir::IE.new
    ie.goto("http://www.google.com/ncr")
    ie.text_field(:name, "q").set("pickaxe")
    ie.button(:value, "Google Search").click
    assert(ie.text.include?("Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide"))
  end

end

Answer 6

On Windows, I have had good luck with ACT that comes with MSDN U (or whatever its called this year) and Visual Studio. The script recording tool is pretty to use and can be customized by even the most non-expert user in no time e.g. me. The hooks for fetching IIS and SQL performance counters integrating into request processing was very helpful for what we were looking for.

One thing I did find misleading was the shape of the RPS graph at test run time vs. the Final result were never the same because of time scales. we wrote a ruby script to convice ourselves that they were correct in both instances based on data available.

I have heard good things from others about the Red-Gate ANTS tool but nothing definative.

Answer 7

Theres also WatiN which is a .net version of the Watir framework. Its fairly easy to use, though I must say I find the test execution speed to be rather slow.

Answer 8

I've also just discovered Windmill, which looks excellent. Its web site has a comparison between it, Watir, and Selenium. This kind of information is invaluable when trying to decide between products that all appear to do the same thing.

Answer 9

Have posted a few links I thought were useful as an answer to a similar question here.

Answer 10

Depends on what your test objectives are.

Most test requirements for web applications can easily be met by Open Source tools such as Watir, Selenium or Celerity (My personal preference is Celerity so far because it runs in headless mode without any browser installed or X in frame buffer mode.).

Answer 11

Agree completely on the value of automated testing!

I'd love to hear experiences of anyone who has successfully gotten non-technical (essentially business analysts, or non-developers) staff to write, and maintain, any type of test using any available tools. I think that there is also a maintenance cost to testing that is often overlooked, especially when getting testing projects off the ground.

After using both commercial and open source tools we've found we are more productive having the developers write, and maintain, any unit and functional tests. Because of this, I'd recommend using any tool that integrates well with your development environment.

However, we often rely on the business analysts to provide the data that feeds any of the tests.