[Koha-devel] Testing Idea

[Travis Elliott Davis]

I have been exploring the idea of automated UI testing for awhile now and have come up with a few different solutions.   My top two picks currently are: WWW::Mechanize in conjunction with HTTP::Recorder, or the FOSS project Selenium.  Both ideas have merit in my opinion but my favorite is Selenium.  

Reasons Why:
Selenium has a FF plugin which makes recording tests cases and suites easy as pie
Selenium has a new "web driver" which makes testing more dynamic pages possible.  For a more detailed explanation see http://seleniumhq.org/docs/03_webdriver.html
You can still perform headless testing.  However, it is slightly more difficult to do with Selenium than with WWW::Mechanize.
Selenium will write Perl test scripts for you, right from the FF plugin.

I'm sure there are more reasons than the ones listed above but I would just like to get the conversation going.  

The other thing that Selenium would allow us to do is automate our bug and enhancement testing.  For example, when you submit a patch you may also submit a selenium test so that whoever is testing your patch may replay your test on their development environment.  Obviously there are some cases where this would be more helpful than others (I'm thinking of varying search results) but it is a start.

Please let me know your thoughts.  I encourage you to visit the Selenium website and test drive Selenium for yourself.  Also, please note that the FF plugin on the FF add ons page seems to be out of date so try getting the XPI from the Selenium site.

Best Regards,


Elliott Davis



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-devel/attachments/20121117/01365f95/attachment.html>