Test Command Auto-Wait Mechanisms for Record and Playback-Style Web Application Testing

Abstract

Test case recording and playback technology, normally implemented as a test case recorder, has been widely applied in the industry. One of the key research topics is how to determine if a web page has entered a ready state before the recorder can perform the next test command? If a web element is incorrectly selected during playback, the related test command will fail to process. This research puts forward four kinds of automatic waiting mechanism for playing test commands. The experiment result shows that the waiting time can be determined dynamically and automatically, so that testers do not have to manually add waiting commands thereby reducing the time and error of artificial discrimination. The proposed mechanisms were implemented as parts of the SideeX open source web testing software and have been further adopted by the new Selenium IDE and Katalon Recorder. Currently, over 60,000 web testers around the world run the mechanisms.