would like to know how to go about doing regression testing effectively?

Question

I would like to know how to go about doing regression testing effectively for a web application.

I m spending a lot of time in regression testing for every build.

I also hear that automated GUI testing is bad and not worth it.

Is there any better way of automating regression testing. if so any good tools to automate GUI tests.

My web app is designed for stupid IE. cant help it, but that how it is.Any good tool that can help me?

I know that we must keep GUI layer thin and all, but I m not a GUI expert or anything , but i need to test it properly and effectively.

Thanks all

Answer 1

Try looking into Cucumber or Selenium There is also a screencast on it over at railscasts. That should really help.

Answer 2

You can use standard unit tests and integration tests for the non-GUI components, of course. For the GUI, it's worth looking at UI automation packages.

Many of them are pretty terrible, but a lot of the horror stories come from people using them incorrectly. If you can stay away from specifying click locations by (x,y) coordinates, and you can detect when state transitions happen, rather than using delay(), GUI testing can be effectively automated.

Answer 3

As long as your webapp works with Firefox, too, I recommend using Selenium for that scenario. It allows you to record your test cases inside the browser (by means of a Firefox plugin) but has Internet Explorer support for playback.

If Firefox for recording tests is not an option, you could have a look at the WebDriver project. It uses a code based approach to test specification an works well with TDD, too.

You might also want to have a look at CubicTest , which is a Eclipse plugin for graphically defining Selenium and Watir test cases.