Checking Websites Mechanically

Checking Websites Mechanically

You have finally completed your business website. You have tried it out for yourself and have had coworkers try it out. The website has been launched. A few weeks later, you begin receiving emails from frustrated clients who say they are unable to place orders because they keep getting error messages while attempting to complete the "Buy Now" stages. 

You responded fast and successfully. A few days later, you receive reports of yet another problem with the website, and you swiftly resolve that, too. After a few months of this, people stop complaining, and life returns to normal. Right now, you're probably updating your website. A consumer emails you a few days later to let you know that the enhancement you made "broke" another part of the website. 

You spend more time trying to identify and resolve the issue, this time feeling more confused and frustrated than before. Many consumers have left you in recent months due to these problems, and their dissatisfaction may have gone beyond their immediate circles. It looks like the only way to have caught these problems before they went "live" would have been to hire a huge team of software testers, which is obviously out of your company's price range.

Automatic software testing has arrived. Human testers can't be replaced, but software automation is necessary for cost-effective, comprehensive testing. Automated testing solutions can be a great complement to human testers and provide a significant workforce multiplier. No matter how little the update to your website, you must always perform extensive testing to guarantee that no other parts of the site are impacted. Due to the vast number of permutations, this takes an enormous amount of time. An automated software testing method is now a financial requirement.

Automated testing tools can be divided into two categories: First, there are functional and regression testing tools, which verify that the site operates as intended (i.e., that when a user clicks on button X, page Y loads without any problems). Automating a wide variety of use cases with functional and regression testing tools helps guarantee that your website performs as expected. The second category, load testing tools, determines how well your site operates under extreme conditions, such as a high volume of concurrent users. In a subsequent piece, I'll talk about load testing.

Now I'll run down the fundamentals of functional testing for you. The first step in automating functional tests is to determine which tests should be automated. After this is complete, you will need to create test scripts to ensure these conditions are met.

The behaviors of actual site visitors are captured and analyzed by functional testing tools. The program keeps track of everything you do on the website or app while you use it. After you're done recording, it takes your activities on the site and produces a script automatically. You might also use the tool to manually construct the script. In most cases, testers will do a hybrid of the two. The recorder will be used to generate the script's overall structure, and then the scripts will be modified by hand to account for edge circumstances.

Graphical or textual scripts are also acceptable. Users of a high-quality functional testing tool shouldn't need to have any prior experience with programming. Graphical scripts will be the main tool for non-programmers. Graph scripts in most tools will display all interactions in a tree structure, allowing users to adjust the script at any node in the tree. However, people with programming experience may prefer to write their own scripts from scratch. Typically, these people will employ a text script written in a popular programming language like JavaScript or Visual Basic.

After your script has been generated, you must include checks to ensure that it is functioning properly. The common term for these inspections is "checkpoints." The values of a property received during testing the website are compared to the predicted values at a checkpoint. Using checkpoints, you may determine what constitutes a successful comparison of predicted and actual results. By keeping track of users' actions on the website, an expected value can be calculated for a piece of real estate. It is inspected and altered at designated vantage points. During replay (or when the test case is run), the current value is retrieved.

Several variants of checkpoints exist. The origin and statistical features of a page or frame can be confirmed at each given checkpoint. You can inspect the complete HTML source of the Web page or frame to look for broken links, verify URLs, image sources, and the hierarchy of HTML tags. Limits for how long it takes a page to load can also be established. A text checkpoint is a location on a web page that checks to see if some piece of text is present or absent. The value of an HTML INPUT field is checked by a web object checkpoint, among other attributes. The accuracy of data stored in a database is checked at a database checkpoint.

The testing tool will launch the recorded application and carry out the steps in the recorded sequence when you select "Replay" from a test script. All the checkpoints you've added to the script will be executed as the script is replayed. In addition, you may observe how your program responds to different sets of data. To demonstrate this, try submitting a page with a variety of values entered into the edit box. Once the replay is complete, a comprehensive report is often generated.

With the help of functional test automation, you can quickly and easily test many scenarios throughout your entire website without manually doing each one. When used properly, functional testing technologies can greatly increase productivity and enable even relatively small testing groups to complete massive amounts of work. The financial case for including Functional Testing Tools in a website's development and launch process is very strong.

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