AutoIt for testing applications

[wsabourin]

Hello there,

I am looking for some feedback regarding this interesting tool regarding test automation. Has anyone actually used it in this way and not just performing clicks but actually being able to validate that an action has had the desired effected after something was done to a control such as read in advanced properties at runtime? And what was the out come of using the tool such as the ups and downs?

[LarryDalooza]

I use nothing but AutoIt for testing software and am currently using it for our "sanity tests" before release to QA. But, I have written a new "recorder" that I intend to eventually profit from. It's engine is AuotIt based. It has image and window state recognition that works well in a static test environment. It records a window by title and a proprietary checksum value and records it's state and dimensions so as to reposition the window during playback. I have abandoned (so far) "standard control" API for harvesting information from controls... because standards are so quickly abandoned.... that is all for now.

Lar.

[cmattb]

I've been using autoit to automate our installation and testing procedure for about a year now. To give some background, we're a customer PC builder, and we have alot of torture tests, performance tests and benchmarks we put our systems though. We use autoit to completly automate the benchmarking process. Most benchmarks and tests have their own built-in logging, so we just compile all that to a single location to be reviewed at the end. We also use things like image comparison to check test screenshots against known screenshots in games to check for video corruption.

We don't use autoit for much more than controlling third-party utilities though.

Overall, autoit has saved us a ton of labor. If we took away all the automation we have in place right now, we'de probably have to double our install/testing staff.

[bo8ster]

I have just started using AutoIt for testing a client's product. Written in C++ Builder I use to run basic sanity tests on the product. Having experience using tools such as Test Director and Quick Test pro I have been against tools that use capture/replay techniques for testing as GUIs during development as they tend to change a lot this you are spending more time maintaining a script then doing the testing.

Proper automated GUI testing is not easy, I recommend reading www.kaner.com/pdfs/shelfwar.pdf to get a good understanding of some of the pitfalls.

Having the ability to get handles to controls is so good because that you can manipulate the control in may ways. I currently use the tool to import data, save it, load it, check if it is correct and do some searching and result set checks. All this and not one tab key!

The only thing missing at the moment is a clean way to log results that can be used as formal deliverables.

For another product, I be using it for a Javascript application created using GWT. I understand that it works with Javascript, I guess I am going to find out how well.

Hope that helps