Nov
6
Written by:
cadams
11/6/2007 11:00 AM
A collegue of mine sent me the following URL:
http://codebetter.com/blogs/scott.bellware/archive/2007/11/05/170636.aspx
In it Scott Bellware discusses using Silverlight v1.1 as a Browser automation test foundation. I have given this some thought. Actually about a year ago I had a position doing QA for a web application that had heavy Flash UI usage. Doing any testing was tedious and mind-numbing to the extreme.
I was close to having a kludgey solution using some rudimentary Flash automation software using some development tools. I had a scripted recorder type thing that I was using. I was actually going to use Firefox actually. I had succeeded in getting a version of the embedded Gecko engine building on Win32 with Visual Studio 2005.
I was thinking of using Firefox as a basis for the sub-system. With the tabbed browsing and extension framework capabilities working within the embedded gecko engine I would have a lot of more freedom. I could use the IE-Tab extension. I could open multiple tabs to run things in parallel.
And I could embed the gecko engine into a homebrew application which would have hooks into the Gecko's brain and into the Flash innards. I could have the automation run predesigned test automation or have it learn and go off on a lark on the site. In a perverse "spidering meets exploratory testing" kind of scheme.
With Silverlight this also has uses. Being a rough equivalent to Flash (I'm generalizing, forgive me).
I read the blog article and revisited my idea. I think it might be handy to either have it be a PowerShell application/script that loads the gecko assembly and then uses the Flash, Silverlight, IE-Tab functionality. However I am dallying with the idea of having a frankenstein hodge-podge application. The solution would have two sub-brains: half embedded gecko/Firefox, half PSHosted Application. Use PowerShell (or straight C# whatever) as an "overmind". Communicate to the PowerShell "brain" what test case to perform and as the "overmind" can spy on DOM related details inside the Firefox/Gecko portion. You could easily have the PowerShell half do any necessary reporting or test case recording. The trick is to get the name of the elements or controls that flash/silverlight is using for the Rich Internet Application. If you can spy or find those out somehow, you can "feed" the sub-brain that drives the browser on what clicks to make or how to navigate.
It could be done with IE, though I haven't investigated using embedded IE based solution as heavily. I think this could be worthwhile and provide some benefit.
Maybe one day I'll revisit this and actually write some code. Maybe I can get a proof of concept working. I had a crude sort of broken, sort of working version with the Flash version. It would have worked completely had I been able to have the developer name the Flash elements in a sane way instead of having names randomly/dynamically made. Some had no name until things were exposed (child items within tree lists, this was a year ago so forgive my poor memory).
As the UI experience grows and matures with Flash/Silverlight based web applications automation solutions are going to have to mature and adapt to these new technologies. I was actually shocked to see how little support there was for any sort of UI automation functionality with regards to QA/Developer support from Adobe for Flash. Is it because it's for designers and web based front-end type guys?
Maybe this will be my exercise in learning how to write a PSHosted Application. Alas one day maybe if I had the time I could pursue this idea.
1 comment(s) so far...
Re: Browser Based UI Automation.
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