Automated Testing of Web Applications Using Combinatorial Strategies

Recently, testing techniques based on dynamic exploration, which try to automatically exercise every possible user interface element, have been extensively used to facilitate fully testing web applications. Most of such testing tools are however not effective in reaching dynamic pages induced by form interactions due to their emphasis on handling client-side scripting. In this paper, we present a combinatorial strategy to achieve a full form test and build an automated test model. We propose an algorithm called pairwise testing with constraints (PTC) to implement the strategy. Our PTC algorithm uses pairwise coverage and handles the issues of semantic constraints and illegal values. We have implemented a prototype tool ComjaxTest and conducted an empirical study on five web applications. Experimental results indicate that our PTC algorithm generates less form test cases while achieving a higher coverage of dynamic pages than the general pairwise testing algorithm. Additionally, our ComjaxTest generates a relatively complete test model and then detects more faults in a reasonable amount of time, as compared with other existing tools based on dynamic exploration.