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.
Related
I'm looking for a Windows program/solution to broadcast actions (mouse movement & clicks, keyboard would be a plus) in real time to multiple browser windows. Best way to describe the functionality I'm after is something like Bluestacks with its sync feature, but in my case with regular desktop browsers instead of emulated android devices. The goal would be to have 20-50 "slave" browsers that receive inputs from a single "master" browser.
I have tried for a long time to find a program that does this, but so far I've not been able to find one. If such thing doesn't exist, I would also be interested to know if this sort of program would be possible/complicated/expensive to code from scratch, as I have no coding experience myself (except basic level python course at the uni). If it's not too complicated and expensive, I might be looking to hire someone to do it.
Edit: I'm not looking for recorded automation, or anything that involves code commands - just simple visual interface and effortless broadcasting across browsers.
All answers and any help will be highly appreciated!
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.
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.
For about a year a half, I've been working with SilkTest, which is a GUI automation tool, for both desktop and web applications. It simulates mouse and keyboard inputs, which eventually simulate end user behaviour. However, I find that it is a bit flaky; Button.Click() or DialogBox.Close() method calls that work just fine 9 times in a row seem to fail on a 10th call, only to go back working on the 11th. Normally I would just chalk this up to a quirk with SilkTest (or the application under Test, or the OS, or what have you) but then I see that there are similar issues with other GUI automation tools like Selenium:
Selenium Click() fails with Anchor Elements
Selenium Click() fails clicking button object
I know that for desktop apps, each GUI control/dialog has a tag element associated with it (at least in Windows-based GUIs) and that for web pages there is the domain object model hierarchy of page elements. My guess is that these tools sometimes run into issues navigating these hierarchies and finding unique elements and controls. But what is going on here? SilkTest is a relatively old, commercial software package while selenium is relatively new, open source and constantly evolving. The fact that they both can have similar problems raises a couple of flags with me.
Also, is this the case with other GUI test tools? Or have I just had a somewhat unusual experience?
There are 2 things here that you are talking about, first the concept of finding an object in the application under test that you want to automate. Your description of how SilkTest (and other tools) does this is quite accurate, i.e. as long as there is something that the automation software can use to identify the control then you are fine.
The second thing is why does the automation itself fails randomly, since the tool has not reported that it could not find the control then it must think that it sent the appropriate action to the application, e.g. a Click or a Type. This could be that the application is not ready to accept the action that you are sending it, this is similar to you attempting to click on something "before it was ready", in this case the application can decide to buffer the input or to discard the input.
So, how do you fix this? One way would be to use the capabilities of the tool to try to work out when the application is ready for input rather than sending it a stream of input blindly. SilkTest has capabilities that allow for you to do this (as does TestPartner). I cannot comment on Selenium as it is something I have not used.
A simple way of testing this would be to insert a pause for a couple of seconds before the offending action, then run this in a loop to see whether this solves the problem, if this is the case then it is your problem. If this does not fix the issue then there is something else going on that you need to contact the vendor of the testing tool.
Remember that applications are getting more and more complex, i.e. multi-threading, communications, any one of these could cause the automatic syncronisation to fail causing actions to fail.
Hope that helps.
I would like to know how to go about doing regression testing effectively for a web application.
I m spending a lot of time in regression testing for every build.
I also hear that automated GUI testing is bad and not worth it.
Is there any better way of automating regression testing. if so any good tools to automate GUI tests.
My web app is designed for stupid IE. cant help it, but that how it is.Any good tool that can help me?
I know that we must keep GUI layer thin and all, but I m not a GUI expert or anything , but i need to test it properly and effectively.
Thanks all
Try looking into Cucumber or Selenium
There is also a screencast on it over at railscasts.
That should really help.
You can use standard unit tests and integration tests for the non-GUI components, of course. For the GUI, it's worth looking at UI automation packages.
Many of them are pretty terrible, but a lot of the horror stories come from people using them incorrectly. If you can stay away from specifying click locations by (x,y) coordinates, and you can detect when state transitions happen, rather than using delay(), GUI testing can be effectively automated.
As long as your webapp works with Firefox, too, I recommend using Selenium for that scenario. It allows you to record your test cases inside the browser (by means of a Firefox plugin) but has Internet Explorer support for playback.
If Firefox for recording tests is not an option, you could have a look at the WebDriver project. It uses a code based approach to test specification an works well with TDD, too.
You might also want to have a look at CubicTest, which is a Eclipse plugin for graphically defining Selenium and Watir test cases.