
Fake - Mac OS X Web Browser Automation and Webapp Testing Made Simple. - sant0sk1
http://fakeapp.com/
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NathanKP
The application looks very nice. I wish there was more info about when it will
be on sale, rather than just saying that it will expire in August. I don't
want to get dependent on it and write my Applescripts just to find them
useless when the demo expires.

~~~
bradleyland
I'd pay for it today. I've tried it out and it seems remarkably stable for an
early-release product.

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d0m
Yes, looks pretty clean and intuitive. Here are some caveats are see thought:

\- I don't really like the name Fake.. I thought it was a lying page or
something..

\- As I see it.. it kind of make it extremely intuitive for a newbie user to
add action.. however, how this newbie user will know the id in the post
field..? (Ok, maybe those users will only use the "click" action).. but still,
it could be good to separate the action into a beginner mode and advanced
mode.. this will make it even easier for no-tech people to use the
application.. and maybe make it more powerful for developers to build test
suite, etc.

~~~
MikeCapone
Agreed about the name. I passed this link 3-4 times, and only ended up
clicking on it because it made its way to the top of HN.

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hansef
What would make this truly epic would be if they offered a secure hosted
subscription service that allowed you to upload a script you built with the
desktop app and either:

a) run it on a hosted Mac Mini at a specified frequency, with a billing rate
based on number of actions/frequency of script execution (aka, someone with a
30 step script who wants their script to run once an hour pays more than
someone with a 5 step script who wants their script to run once a day)

b) execute the script on their hosting via a callback url, so I can hook this
up to my CI server

This plus flexible notifications (email, SMS, Campfire) would be huge.

~~~
niallsmart
SauceLabs do something like this, but for Selenium scripts.

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sghael
If I understand how this works, there is a clear use case for using this over
say Selinium: flash interaction testing. so assuming you have a fixed
dimension site in the fluid browse, you could interact with flash widgets...
Right? or am I totally off track here?

For most other functional testing I'd stick to webrat that I can bake into my
build script.

But flash testing...I really want to crack that nut.

~~~
swombat
Try eggPlant by TestPlant: <http://www.testplant.com/>

We're using it, and it's the only solution we've found that works well for
Flash testing. Costs a bundle, but was worth it to automate our (mostly Flash-
based) app...

Also, it doesn't look like Fake would be able to interact with Flash/Flex
apps, based on the screenshots. Looks like DOM scripting to me.

~~~
hugs
An open-source alternative to the eggPlant's visual-based testing tool is
Sikuli: <http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/sikuli>

And I posted above, you can also use Selenium + Flex-Pilot to test Flash or
Flex apps: <http://github.com/admc/flex-pilot-x/> <http://github.com/mde/flex-
pilot/>

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brianbreslin
why would someone name their app Fake? It makes me think its an april fools
joke.

~~~
mrduncan
Not that I think the name is _that_ great, but "fake" in this context is used
to mean that the app can fake things.

~~~
isleyaardvark
It matters a lot more what it sounds like to people who've never heard of it
before. It's like if I were to create an app called "Malware", people aren't
likely to dig deeper and find out it's a random Malcolm Reynolds quote widget.

"Fake" is such a negative word, were better names taken? "Faux"? "Pseudo"?

~~~
philwelch
"Pseudo" is a GUI interface for sudo:
<http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/pseudo.html>

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davidwparker
Anyone have any experience with both Fake and Selenium that would care to
explain the benefits of Fake?

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senthilnayagam
app looks interesting.

features which I would ask for

a) headless runner

b) applescript may be usable but could it be integrated with ruby or other
programming languages, that I way can make it a driver for my current testing
flow

c) logging/debugging capability

d) and of course price it reasonably :)

~~~
cgbystrom
Doing headless integration testing really is superior. Requiring one machine
per concurrent test isn't scalable. Sure, works great for your weekly/daily
test. But if you want integration testing to run at every commit it's not
going to work.

I've done some experimenting with Celerity (headless integration testing with
JS support) and it works quite well. Can even emulate CSS and it scales much
better. One thread becomes one test. So running 50 tests in parallel on one
machine is no problem. This really is a requirement for me if you want it to
work with CI.

Celerity is based on Watir (similar to Selenium) and Ruby. See
<http://celerity.rubyforge.org/>

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msy
I don't see what this possibly has over webdriver/selenium for anyone that can
code.

~~~
felideon
While your comment is a bit snarky, I too wonder how it compares to Selenium
before I give it a try when I get home.

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jm3
This is beautiful. I love that it saves its steps as an OS X plist file.

~~~
bradleyland
I believe this is a consequence of using the CoreData defaults. I hope the
author leaves it this way. That would allow me to output automated tests from
scripts.

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fizzfur
I hope this continues to develop.

At the moment it seems there is a need to know the ids/classes of your entire
page by heart - or resort to looking at your own source, it would make it
_much_ less painful if when you click in a box that expects an element ID that
your cursor could then be used to click an element, to generate the xpath
(like webinspector/firebug).

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allertonm
SSL appears to be broken, sadly.

Interesting app though - have been a heavy user of Selenium for testing but
building the scripts has been time intensive and generally is done by the QA
team rather than by devs. If the UI for building these tests gets better, then
devs may end up building tests for themselves rather than expecting someone
else to do it.

~~~
allertonm
See
[http://groups.google.com/group/fakeapp/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/fakeapp/browse_thread/thread/a14ddab125d202e8)
for the workaround that got SSL working for me.

(Basically the app currently fails quietly if the SSL certificate doesn't
validate, rather than prompting for action.)

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nat
Look at that, yet another browser automation tool that violates Google's TOS
in its demo.

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mbateman
I didn't know what you were talking about, so I looked it up. I guess you're
referring to this:

> 5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by
> any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google,
> unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement
> with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any
> of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web
> crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in
> any robots.txt file present on the Services.

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nat
Yeah, sorry about that, I guess that would have made my comment a little less
worthless. My interpretation of that clause includes tools such as this, and
though it is hardly some gross violation, I do find it amusing.

I know Selenium RC does the same thing in sample scripts for some of its
bindings, and I'm pretty sure I've seen it in other tools as well.

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joshfraser
i'll be curious to see how many people use this for testing and how many end
up using it for more nefarious purposes like screen scraping or rigging TIME's
100 most influential people poll.

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JMiao
red rock coffee ftw.

~~~
catch23
Maybe HN needs to supply more context when we hit the reply button so that we
don't end up replying to the wrong threads.

