I’ve been using a really cool piece of software recently. Selenium is designed to automate testing of web applications, but I’ve found that it’s fantastic for web automation as well. I have a script that will compile, install, and configure the project I’m working on. It uses vmrun to manage the vmware images, and selenium to do the post install configuration.
You can record your test using the Selenium IDE (available for firefox). Once you get your test (or automation tasks) recorded you can export that test to the language of your choice. The recorded tests normally need a little bit of tuning, but the IDE does a very good job of getting you 80 – 90% of the way there. That script can then be run against the Selenium RC (remote control) server. It drives a web-browser to preform the actions you tell it to.
Cool stuff.
