http://www.stevelongdo.com/articles/2006/02/23/ruby-rails-selenium-and-testing en-us 40 People that have worked with me in the past know how much I think unit tests are worth. In fact I won't say any more about them. White box testing has a place, it just isn't on my <a href="http://www.stevelongdo.com/">blog</a>.<br /><br /> <a href="http://www.openqa.org/selenium/">Selenium</a> is an open source testing framework that will be making products like <a href="http://www.mercury.com/us/products/quality-center/functional-testing/winrunner/">Mercury Interactive's WinRunner</a> quake in their boots. Being able to do acceptance/functional/regression/Black Box testing of web applications across browser and OS platform boundaries from a single script file is already possible with <a href="http://www.openqa.org/selenium/">Selenium</a>. The major testing/QA vendors can't even boast that level of functionality yet. Even better <a href="http://adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php">AJAX</a> applications are supported by <a href="http://www.openqa.org/selenium/">Selenium</a>. There is a <a href="http://www.openqa.org/selenium-ide/">Selenium IDE</a> that works as an extension to <a href="http://www.getfirefox.com">Firefox</a>. You can simply record your actions "macro-like" as you navigate through the web application you want to test. <br /><br /> What makes this all the more exciting is the recent <a href="http://andthennothing.net/archives/2006/02/19/new-version-of-selenium-on-rails">selenium_on_rails</a> plugin. It allows you to embed and run your <a href="http://www.openqa.org/selenium/">Selenium</a> tests as <code class="typocode_ruby"><span class="keyword">rake</span></code> tasks. Automated quality assurance has never been this compelling to include as part of the development process.<br /><br /> So far the only short coming I've observed is the lack of i18n support, however the new .rsel format probably could be used to overcome this. Rsel lets you define your <a href="http://www.openqa.org/selenium/">Selenium</a> tests in terms of <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/">Ruby code</a>. To see all of this in action take a look at the excellent <a href="http://andthennothing.net/archives/2006/02/20/show-dont-tell">screencast over at and then nothing.net</a>.<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE:</strong> Someone made a good point that I maybe didn't make clear here, <a href="http://www.openqa.org/selenium/">Selenium</a> can be used to test <u>ANY</u> web application, not just <a href="http://rubyonrails.org">Rails</a> powered, but even legacy <a href="http://java.sun.com">Java</a>, <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/net/default.mspx">.NET</a>, <a href="http://www.php.net/">PHP</a>, or any <a href="http://www.infogoal.com/cbd/cbdhome.htm">other caveman languages</a> <a href="http://www.perl.com/">from the last century</a>. :-) Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:44:00 +0000 urn:uuid:1fac5e60-0661-42e5-a94d-d53290e519a6 Steve Longdo http://www.stevelongdo.com/articles/2006/02/23/ruby-rails-selenium-and-testing ruby rails ajax selenium testing plugin http://www.stevelongdo.com/articles/trackback/80 Funny you mention Mercury. Want to know how Selenium got its name? Enter "antidote for mercury poisoning" in the search box at google.com and click "I'm Feeling Lucky". You should get this page: <a href="http://www.positivehealth.com/permit/Articles/Dentist/benn44.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.positivehealth.com/permit/Articles/Dentist/benn44.htm</a> By the way, that link will make you freak out if you happen to have amalgam dental fillings. :-) Wed, 01 Mar 2006 06:37:00 +0000 urn:uuid:e3cda7f3-d7e2-4058-bd0c-2cc4e341b473 http://www.stevelongdo.com/articles/2006/02/23/ruby-rails-selenium-and-testing#comment-82