Simple walkthrough testcase using SeleniumTestCase

After all the preparations its time to write some tests. Imagine a sample-application that contains a page per component from a component set. For our nightly build we want to know whether all pages work. So a first test would be to use the browser and click through all pages. Annoying and always the same. Calls for an automated test, doesn’t it?

@Test public void checkCatalog() {
  openAndWaitWebAppRoot();
  clickAndWait("link=CATALOG");
  assertPageTitleEquals("JSF Components Catalog");
  clickAndWait("link=CATALOG");
  clickAndWait("link=Layout components");
  assertPageTitleEquals("Layout components");
  clickAndWait("link=Layout");
  assertPageTitleEquals("Layout Component");
  clickAndWait("link=Container");
  assertPageTitleEquals("Container Configurator");
  clickAndWait("link=GroupBox");
  assertPageTitleEquals("GroupBox Component");
  clickAndWait("link=Tabbed Pane");
  assertPageTitleEquals("TabbedPane Component");
  clickAndWait("link=MessageArea");
  assertPageTitleEquals("MessagesArea Component");
};

Looks easy, doesn’t it? Looks and feels just like the instructions for a human tester. And that’s the writing test should be: simple.

Such a test can also survive a revamp of the menu-structure of the application, as long as the texts of the menu-items remain constant, the testcase, just like the human tester, still find the links to click on. Was very usefull when we did such a refactoring of the sample-application. Every now and then someone from teh team would do the “cvs update”-redeploy-”let the testuite run”-cycle and just report which areas needed some massaging.