[Roboweb-users] Re: [ANNOUNCE] RoboWeb 1.0b, web application test suite generator

[Claudio G. <cl...@me...>]

Hi Aaron,

I just tried recording a sequence on your site and it worked fine. It was able
to fetch all three files it requested. I have attached it to this message so
you can try it yourself.  You may have a problem with your LWP configuration.

One problem you may also have is that three requests (for the html, the css
and the js files) are being recorded, and if you insert a must_match command
then it will try to match on the js file instead of the HTML, where you would
normally want it to. You can see what file you'll be matching against by
looking at the last non-image request in the proxy output. To correct this you
need to hand edit your test file to move the assertion to immediately after
the html is fetched.

Regards,

Claudio





Aaron Johnson wrote:

> Claudio,
>
> I downloaded it and I think I got it configured correctly, but when I run
> the test script that is created I get the following error:
>
> could not fetch URL http://workspace.provillage.com/styles/provillage.css
>
> I removed that pages test.  Then it died with the same error on a .js file.
>
> Is it suppose to check those file types too?  If so why would the request
> fail?
>
> That is a valid URL and I have tested retrieving with wget to make sure.
>
> The html pages in the "sequence" script work fine.
>
> Aaron Johnson
>
> Claudio Garcia wrote:
>
> > I have developed a semi-automatic test generator for web applications.
> > I've called it "RoboWeb" and it's now available for download from
> > sourceforge, hoping that it can be useful to others.
> >
> > The project page at sourceforge is
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/roboweb.
> >
> > Here's an excerpt from the README, and after it a comparison with
> > Test::CGI, which is a tool at CPAN whose intent is similar.
> >
> >   RoboWeb is a suite of Perl scripts that allow for  recording live user
> > browsing sequences and insert assertions during them to later reproduce
> > and automatically verify correctness of output of a web application.
> >
> >   Recording test sequences is easy: just fire the roboweb_proxy script
> > and make your browser point to it. The proxy will generate a test
> > sequence script as you browse and you can insert "must_match"  commands
> > in the recorded sequence by entering regular expressions directly in
> > your browser's URL box. These commands get translated into assertions
> > that will be run against the server response text when the sequences are
> > reproduced, to verify that server responses are correct.
> >
> >   RoboWeb will also automatically put your web application backend
> > database in a constant 'test-scenario' state before recording test
> > sequences and before executing  test scripts. This allows for reliable
> > testing of complex web applications.
> >
> >   Also, the recorded test sequence scripts support cookies, which allows
> > them to interact successfully with most web application.
> >
> >   After you collect a number of test sequences you can execute them via
> > the TEST script, which will produce standard perl Test::Harness output.
> >
> > COMPARISON WITH THE Test::CGI MODULE
> >
> > The intent of Test::CGI is almost the same. It's about crafting test
> > sequences that will be run against a web application in an automated
> > fashion.  The main differences I see between both approaches are:
> >
> > 1. RoboWeb makes it much easier to generate a test suite, because test
> > sequence scripts under it are almost completely machine generated,
> > except assertions, which are easily inserted by entering regexps in the
> > URL box as you browse through your app. Test::CGI instead requires that
> > all HTTP requests be hand coded by the test writer.
> >
> > 2. RoboWeb runs against a live web server, versus Test::CGI, which runs
> > web apps as standalone CGI processes. Test::CGI is less complete in this
> > regard, because it doesn't allow to test apps in the environment they'll
> > be running on (e.g. mod_perl apps that rely on persitent variables are
> > not testable with Test::CGI).
> >
> > 3. The RoboWeb client (which uses LWP::UserAgent and an HTTP::Cookie
> > jar) supports cookies, which allow it to test most web applications.
> > Test::CGI does not support cookies.
> >
> > 4. Test::CGI cannot request plain documents, whereas Roboweb can.
> >
> > 5. Both RoboWeb and Test::CGI produce Test::Harness output.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Claudio Garcia