Flex automated acceptance testing tools

Question

I am looking for recommendations for tools for automated testing of a web application with some flex components.

To provide some background we have a web application that was entirely developed in AJAX+HTML and we were somewhat successful in using Selenium for testing that application end to end. We recently added some flex components into the mix and it got complicated.

We tried using Selenium Flex but we are disappointed with what it can do. So now we are looking for some alternatives. Ideally the tool would be able to drive both the web and the flex parts simultaneously, but we can also settle for just testing the flex components on their own. We prefer open source but good commercial tool is also an option.

I've heard about Fluint and FlexMonkey but haven't tried them yet. Anybody has any experience with using those? Any advice for someone who is just starting? Any gotchas?

Are there some other tools that could be used?

Thanks.

Answer 1

i'v try FlexMonkey.

It was great, until he get lost in the recording of interaction with huge and complex Flex Component.

For me, and for now, it's great in the demo or with small app, but not ready for production.

BUT : seems to evolve quickly.

Answer 2

I've had much success using FunFX to automate a fairly complex Flex application. FunFX is built off FireWatir, which is another web automation framework similar to Selenium. So together that should cover the entire AJAX/HTML + Flex bits of your application.

Since both FunFX and FireWatir are Ruby-based, I also recommend something like Cucumber as your testing framework to glue everything together.

Answer 3

We've had some success using Fluint for unit testing and Quick Test Professional (with the Flex plug-in) for functional end-to-end testing. QTP is pretty heavy-weight, but once you've got it set up and have created a few tests, it works pretty well. It works with Flex as well as vanilla HTML/Javascript, so even if your app is a mix of the two, it should be able to handle it.

Fluint works great for unit testing, but given the amount of code required to test a component, I wouldn't advocate it for functional testing (it's too low-level). FlexMonkey is more of an automation framework for Flex Unit. You basically use it to record test cases, and it generates code using Flex Unit to perform the test. I've tinkered with it, but ultimately decided to use QTP.

As for tips to using Fluint: Learn how to use Sequences if you want to test a Flex component - it will make your life considerably easier.