What tools are useful for automating clicking through a windows form application? Is this even useful? I see the testers at my company doing this a great deal and it seems like a waste of time.
Check out https://github.com/TestStack/White and http://nunitforms.sourceforge.net/. We've used the White project with success.
Though they're mostly targeted at automating administration tasks or shortcuts for users, Autohotkey and AutoIT let you automate nearly anything you want as far as mouse/keyboard interaction.
Some of the mouse stuff can get tricky when the only way to really tell it what you want to click is an X,Y coordinate, but for automating entirely arbitrary tasks on a Windows machine, it does the trick.
Like I said, they're not necessarily intended for testing purposes, so they're not instrumented for unit test conventions. However, I use them all of the time to automate stuff that isn't testing related.
You can do it programmatically via the Microsoft UI Automation API. There's an MSDN Magazine article about it.
Integrates well with unit test frameworks. A better option than the coordinate-based script runners because you don't have to rewrite scripts when layouts change.
There's a couple out there. They all hook into the windows API to log item clicks, and then reproduce them to test.
We're now mostly web based (using WatiN), but we used to use Mercury Quicktest.
Don't use Quicktest, it's awful for a tremendously long list of reasons.
This is what i was looking for.
Check out http://www.codeplex.com/white and http://nunitforms.sourceforge.net/. We've used the White project with success.
Related
What is the best way to control a program's user interface (clicking, entering text, drop down selection, etc) when the program has no available API?
I've heard of AutoHotKey and FlaUI and watched a few videos but haven't seen a great example yet. Before I go too far, is this the best direction/method?
Thanks!
FlaUI is a fully fledged UI Testing library that allows you to automate all aspects of a Windows application. As author of it, I of course recommend it. If you do have a bit of programming know how, it should be fairly easy to use. In case you just want some scripts to run locally, you don't even need Visual Studio or Visual Studio code, you can just use RoslynPad for example and directly create and run your code there.
I use this all the time for small automations, heck even sometimes to input very long passwords in a remote machine where I cannot use copy/paste.
I am working on implementing accessibility (for visually impaired individuals) for one of our web application. It need to be ARIA compliant. Right now we are testing our changes with screen reader manually.
For example we have Tree control in our application. I open NVDA screen reader and then navigate through my Tree Nodes. NVDA screen reader speaks out
Node XYZ expanded, (When I expand XYZ node with right arrow key)
Node XYZ collapsed, (When I collapse XYZ node with left arrow key)
Along with the voice it also write down this text.
But all this is manual. Now we want to setup automated test cases for the same so that any regression bugs can be caught by are test cases. Do there exist any such tool which we can use to automate our test cases. Any direction will be helpful.
PS: Just for a sake of comparison. We have nunit to write test cases for c# application. After writing test cases we integrate them into our build process. Any breaking change is caught when we run the build. I am looking for something similar to test out our aria compliance and screen reader's behavior with our web application.
I don't know of any existing tools for testing screen readers, however, there are accessibility APIs that test websites and web applications.
axe-core from Deque Systems is widely used and well-supported.
I wrote a python package to run automated web accessibility tests that uses axe-core and selenium.
While it isn't quite what you are looking for, it does cover about 60% of accessibility guidelines, including aria roles and attributes. It should help with determining screen reader usability.
You could integrate axe into C#, similar to my python package and the Java package, also created by Deque.
I hope this helps!
It sounds like you're already performing some pretty good manual accessibility testing against your web application, which no automated testing tool is going to be able to replicate completely. That said, if you're looking to take care of any low-hanging fruit with an automated solution, like Kimberly suggested, there are several automated accessibility testing tools out there that you can relatively easily integrate into your existing web application's testing framework that might help you.
One such tool is Continuum, which doesn't have a C#-based library offering at the moment, but could be used in a separate testing framework to be run against your web application after it has already been built. This may be preferable depending on your use case, as code linters for accessibility aren't perfect and are highly language-dependent, whereas testing the HTML of your web application more closely matches the screen reader use case you say you're trying to test for. You could even integrate Continuum into your existing CI/CD process to make sure your application is tested during development as opposed to afterwards, to reduce your manual accessibility testing load.
Continuum has a few sample projects to get you started, depending on your technologies of choice. Free versions are available at webaccessibility.com if you're interested. Most of them are Java- or JavaScript-based at the moment.
Appreciate this is quite an old question, but having explored this area a lot recently thought was worth updating with the state as of 2023 as there is now some progress in this space.
Current tooling available at time of writing (that I’m aware of, may not be exhaustive):
guidepup - NodeJS automation for VoiceOver and NVDA supporting all keyboard commands and getters for spoken phrases (disclaimer: I’m the author).
auto-vo - CLI for navigating sequentially through a page with VoiceOver and reporting the spoken phrases, also exports a separate Node module for some interactions with VoiceOver.
screen-reader-reader - NodeJS automation for VoiceOver and NVDA for starting, stopping, and getting spoken phrases.
web-test-runner-voiceover - NodeJS plugins for #web/test-runner to automate VoiceOver testing.
nvda-testing-driver - .NET automation for NVDA supporting all keyboard commands and getters for spoken phrases.
assistive-webdriver - NodeJS implementation of a Webdriver server that allows remote testing of screen readers (e.g. NVDA, JAWS) running in a VM.
As stated in other answers, there are also a number of static analysis tools such as axe, as well numerous browser extensions offering similar static analysis, and companies such as Assistiv Labs offering remote environment services to interact with screen readers manually (similar to SauceLabs/BrowserStack/etc. but for screen readers, magnification etc. - no affiliation and haven’t used services so can’t vouch, simply an observation).
Worth calling out that none of these cover the full range of a11y requirements - there is more to a11y than just screen readers. A combined/layer approach including automation, manual testing, and user testing likely preferred.
Just new on software testing...
Regarding testing, I think GUI applications are pretty difficult to automate. Some testing involves with interacting particular GUI objects in particular sequence (e.g., clicking buttons). The interface often changes from one window to another. And the timing and sync sometimes also pose an issue (e.g., recording mouse clicks and replaying may screw up).
Is there any solution for testing such applications with less human labour? Thank you for sharing your experience.
Yes, GUI apps are indeed tough to automate. Regardless of the app's technology (Swing, web, WPF, iOS), you first have to focus on automating high-value tests. Moreover, test automation shouldn't be at just the GUI level, it should be a mix across unit, integration, and functional (GUI) tests too.
Are you working on a web app? If so, have a look at great open source tools like Watir or WebDriver. (I'll also pitch Telerik's Test Studio to you; however, for full disclosure I'm their evangelist for that tool.)
Desktop applications (or mobile) bring a lot of challenges to automation, and it's totally dependent on what platform you're working with. Test Studio supports WPF, but you can also look to other commercial and a few free tools. I don't know of any tools for Swing apps, but that lack of knowledge is due to me having been out of that domain for many years. (And maybe I'm so out of it that Swing's not even the normal Java GUI toolset...)
iOS and Android are tough ones to find reliable automation tools for. I know the Frank framework/API will work on iOS (Test Studio has a free recorder in the App Store), but I don't know of any other tools that reliably support the extraordinary matrix of Droid hardware and OS versions.
Regardless of your platform and toolset, you need to learn the basic approaches for dealing with GUI testing: focus on high value tests, learn to avoid duplication through approaches like Page Object Pattern, learn how to deal with synchronization/timing issues in your specific application.
It's a long haul, but if you work carefully it's totally worth it.
(And fun, too, IMO.)
I try to use this 2 projects for primitive gui testing automation:
http://www.ptfbpro.com/
http://www.autoitscript.com/
And I can't make my choice.
Can somebody explain me: why(in 2 or 3 lines) he use one of them(or other please specify)?
I use AutoIt...
because it's free, well documented (not only) from inside of the Scite Editor and you can easily compile your script into a small executable or even create a complete GUI and there is a very good community in the forums and around here. And its Basic-Like Syntax is really easy to understand, there are functions and even a foreach-syntax, dynamic arrays and lots of additional functions from other users... There's good integration with other programming languages and from the use of so many WinAPI functions you lack of very little possibilities. It can automate IE usage without even displaying a browser window and send network packages, you can send Keystrokes like a user sitting in front of your screen and there's the AU3Record Tool which allows you to just record a Macro and replay it or save it as a script and then you can easily optimize it and edit it for your needs. Or use the AutoIt Window Info tool to see all the possible handlings for your application, you can interact with any kind of program output/display according to different algorithms you may invent.
Enough facts? ;-)
Go with Autoit3. It 's a lot more reliable, and you have a complete script language. Ptfbpro is only a tool (not free), nothing more. AUtoit3 has a lot of contributors that can help you in your process, Ptfbpro is dead.
If you want a script taht really do what you want, just go for AutoIt. Ptfbpro can't be used as a professional tool.
Autoit3 as well. You really can't beat it for being free and so easy to use.
In the bad old days of interactive console applications, Don Libes created a tool called Expect, which enabled you to write Tcl scripts that interacted with these applications, much as a user would. Expect had two tremendous benefits:
It was possible to script interactions that otherwise would have had to be repeated by hand, tediously. A classic example was dialup Internet access hell (from the days before PPP).
It was possible to write scripts to test one's own interactive applications, programmatically, as part of a regression suite.
Today most interactive applications are on the web, not on the console. Hence my question: is there any tool that provides the ability to interact with web pages and web forms programmatically, much as Expect provides the ability to interact with console applications programmatically?
(The closest thing I am aware of is Chickenfoot.)
You might be looking for Selenium
I've used Selenium RC in conjunction with Python to drive web page interactions programmatically. This has allowed me to write pretty extensive user tests in which forms and inputs are driven and their results are measured.
Check out the Selenium IDE on Firefox (as mentioned above). It allows you to record tests in the browser and play them back, either using the IDE itself, or the Remote Control app.
Perl Mechanize works pretty well for this exact issue.
HTTPS and some authentication issues are tricky at times. I will be posting couple questions about those in the future.
I did a ton of Expect work in a former life and always thought Don Libes' Expect book was one of the best-written and most enlightening technical books I'd ever seen.
Hands down I would say that Perl's WWW::Mechanize library is what you want. I note above that you were having trouble finding documentation. There is good documentation for it! Look up the module's distribution on search.cpan.org and see what all is packaged with it. There's a FAQ, Cookbook with examples, etc. Plus I've always been able to get help on the web. If you can't get it here, try at use.perl.org or perlmonks.org. WWW::Mechanize's author, Andy Lester, is present on Stack Overflow. (He's also an all around friendly and helpful guy.)
I believe WWW::Mechanize also has a program that is analogous to Expect's autoexpect program: you set up a proxy process running this program as a server, point your browser to it as a proxy, perform the actions you want to automate, and then the proxy program gives you a WWW::Mechanize program for you to use as a base for your project. (If it works like autoexpect, you will certainly want to make modifications from there.)
As mentioned above, WWW::Mechanize is a browser (to be more exact, it is a web client or http client) that happens to be programmable. The last time I looked, there was even work in progress to make it support JavaScript.
In addition to Selenium, if you're doing the Ruby/Rails thing, there's Webrat.