Automating Web UI testing with SWEA, C#, & NUnit (part 1)

Several months ago when I started working on the IA team I was shopping around for a "better" automated Web UI solution. In the past Corillian has used Segue SilkTest for the job and a few of us on the PS QA team had gone as far to build a framework that made creating test scripts easier, more reliable, more consistent, and reusable. As many of us in the industry know, Segue products come with a pretty high cost and SilkTest and 4Test is not a simple thing to pickup. The learning curve had always been a hang-up when trying to get the whole QA team or Developers to do automation. I took this as a lesson learned when I moved to the IA team and now I was on the hunt for a different solution. A solution with simple goals:

1. The ability to record Web scripts through the browser 
2. Scripts that use a standard language that both developers and QA Engineers can use (I was strongly leaning towards C#)
3. The ability to work tests into the automated build process
4. Low in cost

When I first moved over, other teams in Corillian started to play with the combination of Ruby, Watir, C#, and NUnit. The use of Ruby to drive Internet Explorer was not new to me, I took a class on how to do it at PNSQC a couple of years ago, but the release of Watir coupled with NUnit made the solution more appealing. At the time co-workers Scott Hanselman and Dustin Woodhouse had started to use the combination and were spreading the word on how well it worked. Following their lead, I automated a small part of the IA Reference Implementation along with the Administration Implementation. It worked for me, but debugging in Ruby was semi-painful, I REALLY wanted to use C#, and 2 of my 3 goals were not achieved:

1. I couldn't record the scripts for Ruby/Watir
2. Ruby is not a standard, well known language. Yes, it's a scripting language, it's simple, but it's still just one more language to learn and understand. The last thing I need is to have the new QA Engineer learn yet another language in his .NET world...Ruby.

At the time Scott had started a side project to record scripts called WatirMaker. This was a start of a good thing, but it was far from complete and I didn't really have the time to deal with the headaches that come along with brand new software (I had enough on my plate with trying to find a good tool for testing Web Services). So, I continued the search with the thought that "I'm not the first one; somebody else has definitely gone through this already". Searching eventually brought me to a blog post on TestingReflections.com that talked about the use of SWEA (Software Explorer Automation) with NUnit. Following the tutorial from TestRefelctions.com, in about half the time it took me to build my Ruby/Watir scripts, I rebuilt the scripts using SWEA, C#, and was testing from NUnit. Oh, the sweet power of SWEA! I had just achieved:

1. The ability to record scripts (using SWEA)
2. Scripts that used the language of C# (using SWEA, recordings can be exported in VB.NET too)
3. The first step to having script in the automated build process by having the scripts run in NUnit
4. Low in cost: FREE

How? Oh, you want details?...Coming soon in the future post: Automating Web UI testing with SWEA, C#, & NUnit (part 2)

Update 02/20/2006: Part 2 and 3 have been added!