Ask HN: How do you test web UI/JavaScript? We just set up QUnit, and it was kind of a difficult Google-fest to get working. On the UI side however, I haven't touched a UI framework since Selenium a while back. What do you use to test UI/UX on the web? |
But once you start to have to test large applications where the server side app and javascript are intertwined, you start running into lots of problems. I'm just guessing but I think this is the case for most devs that really want to test their javascript. Most arent building a library they're using one, they're also probably not building one page apps that are pure javascript, more like components that are getting integrated into larger (existing) applications. And personally, I haven't been able to find a solution that works well without tons of annoying headaches, that are often more trouble than clicking through your app in various browsers and os's for a day. So if anyone has found a solution i would love to hear about it PLEASE! :)
Right now you can try selenium (I personally don't like it, but wont go into it here), then you can also try something like phantomjs (or another headless browser), but this wont let you test IE at all, which usually defeats almost the whole point. Also you're most likely going to run into problems dealing with context, because your javascript is being inserted into the testing browser inside the test suite context (long story but I've had problems here too). Capybara has problems with testing async js, but you could try it. In summary its just a pain, I wish someone had a solution too but I unfortunately dont.
We've dabbled with BusterJS as an alternative when needing to run the tests in multiple browsers/devices.
Also used Selenium/Sahi on occasion for acceptance tests. We need to test on lots of mobile devices so this helped speed things up a little when using the Android WebDriver and Appium.
I still don't feel like we've found the holy grail of JavaScript/UI testing. A mixture seems to works best for us. Unit test what we can and using Selenium/Sahi when testing browser/device inconsistencies are important.
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