On the ThinkPHP blog today, there's a new post that looks at using the Selenium Javascript library to test your applications, ensuring that the input methods are all up to snuff.

Testing software whilst ongoing development seems to be a boring job containing a lot of reoccurring tasks. As a reaction on all this effects we need to add more testing. So what do we do? We use a person to click through the application, using its features as he or she thinks they are intended to use.

In the end we need another expert in the team for a boring reoccurring task, finding bugs that are easy to find and most times, simple to resolve. Did i say simple task, reoccurring? Why not use a Software for the click-around testing in our application to check if it still does what it needs to do ?

The testing tool of choice for them is Selenium, a Javascript library to perform the clicks and put into input fields data to check your application's functionality. They describe the three kinds of test suites (links to their descriptions) and show what a simple automated test would look like. There's even a link to a tutorial from IBM on the topic.

They step through the process of creating the test (no code) and show how to store them in CVS (as well as talk about a few "dirty tricks" they found out along the way).