What is the best automated website UI testing framework

Question

What are the good automated web UI testing tools?

I want to be able to use it in the .Net world - but it doesn't have to written in .net.

Features such as a record mode, integration into build process\ continuous integration would be nice.

Im going to look at:

• Watir
• Selenium

Are there any others I should look at?

Solution 1

I definitively recommend Selenium, you can use it from .NET, supports different browsers, works in automatic builds and CI processes (we use it from CCNet). The code is stable. It has a few quirks, but after all they all do.

Whichever tool you choose, I recommend making your own test facade class(es) around it. The facade should be designed to suite your concrete testing needs, without exposing too much the details of the testing tool's API. This will make the test code easier to write and maintain.

UPDATE: if you use ASP.NET view state in your app, you could have problems using a pure HTTP test tool. This is where browser-controllers (like Selenium) are much better.

Solution 2

WatiN

Automates FF and IE

[Test] 
public void SearchForWatiNOnGoogle()
{
 using (IE ie = new IE("http://www.google.com"))
 {
  ie.TextField(Find.ByName("q")).TypeText("WatiN");
  ie.Button(Find.ByName("btnG")).Click();

  Assert.IsTrue(ie.ContainsText("WatiN"));
 }
}

http://watin.sourceforge.net/

Solution 3

Watin is pretty unstable to use it in serious projects. It often fails with unexpected reasons like "EI is busy" or something like "Error with COM object". Selenium is much more stable and it already has a lot of supporting tools. For example Selenium GRID is a solution which allows significantly decrease run time of tests. (Our smoke tests on Watin takes 6 hours to run).

Solution 4

Having used several different automated testing solutions (TestComplete, QTP, etc), I have to put a vote in for Telerik + Visual Studio. Telerik has great support forums, and is very compatible with whatever testing framework you come up with. Our Devs put unique IDs into their HTML code so that our scripts don't need to be rewritten even with pretty drastic UI refactors. It's definitely more challenging than record and playback, but once you have your unique IDs in place, the automation code requires little or no maintenance.

Solution 5

You can also try VSTT - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/slumley/archive/2009/05/28/vsts-2010-feature-enhancements-for-web-test-playback-ui.aspx

Telerik Test Tools - http://www.telerik.com/automated-testing-tools.aspx

Visual Studio UI Test Extensibility–Scenarios & Guiding Principles - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mathew_aniyan/archive/2011/03/28/visual-studio-ui-test-extensibility-scenarios-amp-guiding-principles.aspx

VSTS Web Test Step-by-Step Primer - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimmymay/archive/2009/02/23/vsts-web-test-step-by-step-primer-7-minute-video-by-microsoft-a-c-e-performance-engineer-chris-lundquist-with-copious-notes-screen-shots-from-your-humble-correspondent.aspx

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