I'm currently working on writing a suite of test scripts using watir webdriver. Is there something out there that would make script generation easier than looking directly at the HTTP and manually putting the script together? Maybe something captures user interactions with the browser elements and then writes that to a script.
I could just write them manually, but I may as well ask and see if there is a better way.
There are a couple record and playback tools that are available for Selenium (like IDE), and several non-open source solutions as well. Most of the Selenium and Watir development communities actively discourage their usage for writing test suites as they create very brittle tests that are difficult to maintain over time.
Watir does allow you to locate elements based on text or regular expressions, which can make it easier to find many elements without looking at the html. In general, though, you the tester have a better idea of the structure of your website, what id elements are there, and what css elements are unique on a page, or unlikely to change with future site updates, etc.
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For testing purpose, I'm looking for a tool that simulates browsing activity. I'm not looking for just HTTP(S) traffic generator, I need to define some browsing scenarios. For example, to browse [x] links deep, or randomly jump from page to page, or to randomly fill and submit forms, maybe even generate some erroneous requests. It's important to support all HTTP verbs (PUT, HEAD, DELETE, ...etc.), and hopefully, but not necessarily, command line. It'd be a very big plus to have randomizable fields (IP address, User-Agent, ...etc.)
If no such tool exist, what are the recommended packages to script such in ruby?
This is called "end to end" web testing (e2e)
You may want to look at selenium, a technology that is able to take control of a browser and automate user browsing scenarios.
Selenium is usually used through some kind of control tool. Since you use ruby, you may want to look at selenium-webdriver
If you want random interactions, I heard of a tool called gremlins
I suggest you look into capybara https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara
You can use capybara with the most common ruby test frameworks, rspec, cucumber, test::unit...
It supports selenium by default but you can also make it headless (not opening a browser window) if you use another driver such as capybara-webkit.
Check you the README, you'll find everything you need.
Is there a way to detect whether someone is conducting web testing using watir-webdriver on your site? I have read somewhere that it is fairly easy to detect watir/selenium, but I never managed to get more details about it.
I have tried UserAgent detection, but that's not something very useful as far as it's easy to change it.
Right, I will make my comments into an answer as requested.
I doubt if it's possible. The idea of Selenium is to automate browsers by simulating actions like real users. You can't possibly detect it from server side, unless Selenium fails to simulate (e.g. click really fast, but if the Selenium code is written deliberately to simulate a real user in a slow fashion, then I'd say it will be difficult to detect).
On the other hand, User Agent approach won't work if someone runs it using common browsers with default UA.
I am developing a rather large automation application to scrape various abandoned property information from various state databases, in order to find specific properties. I have already developed search scripts for about 8 state websites, using various forms of automation. I prefer to use something like ruby's Mechanize library to perform the automation, because it is the most stable method I have come across so far. In some cases, I am unable to automate the scraping with Mechanize and must fall back to something like Watir (or, more specifically, the branch of Watir called Vapir). Vapir is needed specifically when a source requires javascript to be searched, since Mechanize only makes HTTP requests and does not deal with JS interpretation.
My problem is with Vapir automating an instance of Internet Explorer. In some cases, after prolonged searches (some of these searches are for lists of 4,000+ search terms), IE locks up. I assume it is an issue with the OLE engine. The error I receive is as follows:
failed to create WIN32OLE object from `InternetExplorer.Application' HRESULT error code:0x80004005 Unspecified error
I cannot find anything to resolve this issue.
My question is if anyone knows of any solution or work-around to an automated OLE instance that locks up? To fix the error, I have to manually kill all of the IE processes and restart the automated search.
Alternatives that I am aware of are to automate Firefox through Vapir in the back-end (rather than IE), or possibly switch over to something like PhantomJS. Does anybody have an opinion on either of these options?
Is there a reason you are using Vapir? Why don't you try watir (drives Internet Explorer) or watir-webdriver (drives Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera) gems?
For installation see https://github.com/zeljkofilipin/watirbook/blob/master/installation/windows.md
Are there any tools for testing XUL? I'm using yui test for testing XPCOM. But I can't find any for XUL
(source: clear-code.com)
I am using UxU, which is a reworked version of MozUnit. Though I was initially intimidated by the fact that its documentation is half in Japanese, I've used it for few hours and I already feel like recommending it!
Besides allowing you to test your javascript code within the same environment wherein it will run, it also provides a number of convenient helpers methods to remote-control the browser and automating functionalities such loading URLs, opening Tabs, modifying preferences, accessing files and local storage..
Definitively worth of a try!
I need to write some scripts that access some websites. A script from the command line would get some pages, post some forms, screen-scrape some information, etc.
It cannot really be a library "browser" like libwww-perl, because some steps might require user interactions (CAPTCHAs, Ajax-only forms, any interaction surprises, etc.).
The most practical way I can think of would be remotely opening a tab in Firefox, and injecting JavaScript code into it, something a bit like what Greasemonkey and Selenium do. It doesn't necessarily have to be for Firefox and can be a different browser if that's easier.
So what would be the best way to do that?
Have you considered Selenium Remote Control? I've automated browser interaction using the tool before and it works very well, providing a lot of flexibility
Depending on your exact needs, you might be able to leverage the Selenium IDE which is an easy to use Firefox plugin that allows easy scripting.
You can use XPCOM to extend Firefox in every way imaginable. You could write some kind of interface that connects with another process maybe.
I'm not sure what the "best" way to do it would be, but one possibility would be to use AppleScript for the job. Firefox, however, doesn't have extensive scripting capabilities—if you are willing to use Safari, there is an AppleScript command available to inject JavaScript code into a document (the do JavaScript command—look it up in Safari's scripting dictionary, available from within Script Editor).
Also, in order to run AppleScripts from the command line, use osascript:
osascript path/to/script.scpt
To write srcripts on OS X there are two ways I would recommend, and both of them are in ruby. The first is Watir which is an automated testing framework that will control both firefox and safari on Mac os x.
Another, prehaps better way for screen scraping would be to use hpricot which is a html parser that is really easy to use.
In the background Watir uses JSSh - a TCP/IP JavaScript Shell Server for Firefox to do this is. JSSH allows you you control the browser from a telnet session.
Whichever way you go, if ther eare catchpa's they will stop you though. It's sort of the whole point of them :-)