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AUTOMATION TESTING OF WEB APPLICATION BASED ON THE NAVIGATION USING JSON S.K. Muthusundar1 Research scholar, Bharath University, [email protected] 2 Dr. Paul Rodrigues , Dean-CSE Vellamal Engineering College, Chennai, Arul Ganapathy and jawaharRufus3,Dept of IT, Kings Engineering College, chennai ABSTRACT Testing such application manually is a tedious one. Therefore, we go for automation testing. Automation testing is performed by navigating the web application using a browser. For modeling the navigation xml notation is used. It is difficult when xml is used for exchanging highly structured data between web applications. Hence, this paper discuss about the navigation modeling using JSON (Java Script Object Notation), which is the open standard designed for data interchange. 1. INTRODUCTION Software testing is done to ensure the quality of software and to find defects. It is in general a difficult and time-consuming task. Web testing may be even more difficult since it have enormous number of web pages and links [1].This piece of research presents an approach to test web application by automating its navigation. The tasks that have to be carried out in navigation testing are creation of test cases for each path, generating test data, test case execution and finally test report is generated [2]. A web application is tested using different combinations of input and state to reveal bugs. These bugs are caused due to the ambiguous functional requirements. To achieve the automated functional testing, functional requirements should be given in a form that can be understood by software tools [3]. In order to automate the testing process we need to model the web navigation. To find path in web navigation several algorithms (The Chinese Postman Problem (CPP),The Shortest Path Problem(SPP),The node Reduction algorithm) are used. Among these CPP suits the problem of checking websites[4].CPP covers all the links of a web site. Therefore, 191

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 3, Issue 1, January- June (2012), © IAEME

CPP is the selected algorithm to find out set of path. For modeling web navigation we use JSON [5] instead of XML. Section 2 discusses about XML and its drawbacks and section 3 discuss about JSON (XML alternative). 2. XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) provides an easy way to store and share and information [6]. It is a textual data format with strong support via Unicode for the language of the world[7]. Although the design of xml focuses on documents, it is widely used for representation of arbitrary data structures for web applications. To support service oriented architecture, the XML data provider can query web services by parsing the XML structure of the SOAP response directly[8]. This requires knowledge of the web services which includes the namespace, method, SOAP action, parameter and schema of the response body. To provide the formal declaration of this XML format, XML schema language (XSD) will be used to perform the formalization of the navigation constraints[9]. This XSD schema defines a website as a collection of states (pages) and transitions (links). The initial page is called home, and it is unique. Links are used to connect finite number of web pages (states). A simple example that illustrates the navigation path of a Website XSD-SCHEMA of WEBSITE.xml user pass 192

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 3, Issue 1, January- June (2012), © IAEME

Have a good day An XML parser converts this XML document into an XML DOM object. The following code fragment parses an XML document into an XML DOM object. If(window.XMLHttpRequest) { Xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest(); } Else { Xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject(“Microsoft.XMLHTTP”); } Xmlhttp.open(“GET”,”WEBSITE.xml”,false); Xmlhttp.send(); xmlDoc=xmlhttp.responseXML; XML DOM represents an XML document as a tree structure.XML deals with data model and traversing but it is not effective in the case of data interchange [10]. For large applications data interchange in XML is quite complex. Therefore, an alternative (JSON) for XML is discussed below. 3. JSON When designing an application that will communicate with a computer, a data format must be selected. There is variety of standardized options and the ideal choice depends on the applications requirements and existing functionality. SOAP – based web services format the data in an XML payload wrapped within a SOAP envelope. XML does not provide any notation of data types[10]. One must rely on Schema for 193

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 3, Issue 1, January- June (2012), © IAEME

adding type information. But JSON provides scalar data types and the ability to express structured data through arrays and objects. JSON is an open, text-based data exchange format. Like XML, it is humanreadable, platform independent [11]. Data formatted according to the JSON standard is lightweight and cab be parsed by JavaScript implementations with incredible ease, making it an ideal data exchange format for Ajax web applications [12]. It can be used in virtually any scenario where applications need to store structured information as text as follows.

While XML works well for many applications scenarios, it has some drawbacks that make it less than ideal for others. It is not ideal with Ajax-style web applications. JavaScript Object Notation provides a standardized data exchange format that is better-suited for Ajax-style web applications [13]. The following example JSON code implements a website model.

{ “Home”: { “webpage1”: { “form”: [ { “Name”:”jabas”, “user_id”:”3002”, “address”:”chennai” } ] 194

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 3, Issue 1, January- June (2012), © IAEME

“Target”:”webpage2” } “webpage2”: { “From”:”webpage1” “target”:”webpageN” } “webpageN”: { ............ ............ } } } In the above example, arrays are used for data interchange purpose. Since ,array can deals with enormous amount of data. 4. TEST AUTOMATION FRAMEWORK Data driven testing approach is used to test a web application based on its navigation [14]. JSON document is given into the JSON parser. JSON parser process and validate the JSON document. In order to store the test data and expected outcome a tabular data file will be used. This file will store test data and expected outcomes [15]. Therefore, this method has one strong prerequisite (i.e) there should be a model of the navigation behavior of the web under test. As shown before, navigation is modeled by using JSON. First test cases for the paths are generated and then the input data’s are added [16].

Figure 1: Test Automation Framework

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International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 3, Issue 1, January- June (2012), © IAEME

Data Driven Scripts Data driven scripts are those application-specific scripts captured in the automation tool’s proprietary language and then modified to accommodate variable data. Here, the processed navigation model is given into the scripts generator. Scripts will be in the format understandable by the automation tool [17]. Variables will be used for key application input fields and program selections allowing the script to drive the application with external data supplied by the calling routine or the shell that invoked the test script. White Box parser It translates the navigation model to graphs. White Box testing is also known as structural testing [18]. Here it takes into account the navigation path structure and design the required test cases. Black Box parser It retrieves test data (input) and expected outcome (output) from the input navigation model. Regarding input data, this black box parser should extract the value and the data type[19]. Outcome Analyzer The response data from the SUT are carried into the outcome analyzer. From the response data the navigation state information and the actual data returned by the application are analyzed and extracted. Reports Based on analyzed data, reports are generated. Reports indicate the status and description of all test cases. Status may be passing or fail [20]. And the description depicts the reason for the corresponding status. CONCLUSION This paper has presented the method for modeling the web navigation using JSON (Java Script Object Notation) instead of XML (Extensible Markup Language) . JSON supports data interchange in complex web applications. In functional testing this model is given as an input to the software program to generate automated test case. Future work will extend the presented approach through the automation of testing and analysis of non-functional requirements such as performance, security, compatibility, usability and accessibility.

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International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 3, Issue 1, January- June (2012), © IAEME

REFERENCES [1] "Functional Testing of Web Applications" Retrieved 2011-12-12. [2] Software Testing by Jiantao Pan, Carnegie Mellon University. [3] Exploratory Testing, Cem Kaner, Florida Institute of Technology, Quality Assurance Institute Worldwide Annual Software Testing Conference, Orlando, FL, November 2006. [4] J. Edmonds and E.L. Johnson, Matching Euler tours and the Chinese postman problem, Math. Program. (1973). [5] Crockford, Douglas (May 28, 2009). "Introducing JSON" json.org. Retrieved July 3, 2009. [6] "XML 1.0 Specification". W3.org. Retrieved 2010-08-22. [7] "XML 1.0 Specification". W3.org. Retrieved 2010-08-22. [8] Push, Pull, Next! by Bob DuCharme, at XML.com. [9] ^ "XML and Semantic Web W3C Standards Timeline". 2012-02-04. [10] Jeff Atwood (2009): XML: The Angle Bracket Tax. [11] "JSON: The JavaScript subset that isn't". Magnus Holm. Retrieved 16 May 2011. [12] Crockford, Douglas (December 6, 2006). "JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML". Retrieved July 3, 2009. [13] "Web specifications supported in Opera Presto 2.5". March 10, 2010. Retrieved March 29, 2010. [14] Carl Nagle: Test Automation Frameworks, Software Automation Framework Support on SourceForge. [15] van Veenendaal, Erik. "Standard glossary of terms used in Software Testing" [16] EtestingHub-Online Free Software Testing Tutorial. "e)Testing Phase in Software Testing:". Etestinghub.com. Retrieved 2012-01-13. [17] Carl Nagle: Test Automation Frameworks, Software Automation Framework Support on SourceForge. [18] BCS SIGIST (British Computer Society Specialist Interest Group in Software Testing): Standard for Software Component Testing, Working Draft 3.4, 27. April 2001. [19] Ron, Patton. Software Testing. [20] "Article referring to other links questioning the necessity of unit testing". Java.dzone.com. Retrieved 2012-01-13. 197