Testing JSF

It#039;s been a while since I#039;ve blogged last (ok, it#039;s been a year), but I recently came across a question that I have a little insight into, and I thought I#039;d tackle it briefly. The question was simple:  How do I test my JSF application? I#039;ve used two different test frameworks to do so, and besides being two of the most popular, they also offer a good example of the two different patterns used for Web testing.  The two programs are HTMLUnit and Selenium.  (Please note, there are certainly others -  FacesTester, and JSFUnit (which actually uses/extends HTMLUnit),  to name just two - but I#039;m going to stick to the two that I#039;ve used.) HTMLUnit is a framework which uses browser simulation to test web pages - this means that no browser is launched, which also means that you can do things like test IE7 on Linux without a copy of Windows, as well as running testing in headless mode, meaning that you don#039;t even need a windowing system to be running (which is handy, and also very efficient for performance).  There are downsides to this, of course - for one, it#039;s possible that the simulation may not be perfect (though I#039;ve never found a case where it wasn#039;t).  The other disadvantage is that you can#039;t actually see what#039;s going on during testing, which can be awkward when figuring out why your test failed.    HTMLUnit supports emulating FF2, FF3, FF3.6, IE6, IE7, and IE8. Selenium, o...

Date: January, 22 2011
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/driscoll/archive/2011/01/22/testing-jsf

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