We all know that in the ideal world, our web apps would have "sufficient" automated tests. But how? I'm not an expert here, but I've come across four general strategies:
| Description | Example | PRO | CON |
| Send web requests, and then parse the corresponding response. | MSTest WebTests | - Handles simple postbacks very well
- Independent of server technology (you don't care if it's ASPX, JSP, or PHP providing the responses back)
- Lots of Visual Studio support
| - Dies on Ajax because it can't parse JavaScript
- Requires a ton of parsing logic. Granted, there are free Html parsers to help with this.
- Requires the expensive version of Visual Studio for Testers, so not everyone can run on their machines unless management pays $$$ for the licenses.
|
| Directly tap into the ASPX pipeline (I'm no expert here, but to my limited knowledge, it seemed different than merely the request-response model). | NUnitAsp (but this was officially ended) | - Minimizes the parsing
- Free
| - Still trouble with JavaScript (if memory serves me right).
|
| Recording and playing back the mouse and keyboard movements | Don't know offhand, but I've heard of them with COM+ | - Tests actual UI layout (is the textbox 10 pixels below the button).
| - Very brittle with browsers, especially because browsers can resize
|
| Run the browser in an automated script. | WatiN | - Because it runs the browser itself, it can handle whatever the browser handles, like JavaScript. This is huge in today's Ajax world.
- Free! This is great when you want the entire team to run it on their local machines.
- Active community supporting it
| - (I believe, but may be wrong) that because it runs the browser, it's limited to just IE.
|
Personally, I've seen the best luck with WatiN. Especially in the Ajax age, automated tests need to run JavaScript. I also find that to get a team to adopt a new tool, it's invaluable to let them run it themselves (i.e. anyone can download the open-source tool and run it with management paying $$$ for a license), and to provide tutorials (i.e. WatiN has an active community).
tags: testing aspnet
links: digg this technorati
WatiN latest version also supports Firefox. The recorder is a bit basic
(last version I used generated obsolete commands), but generally it's still
the best tool
