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Watin and Nunit for testing web pages

Posted by Dave Mellors | Filed under Software Development

I recently had to develop some new content for an online store. The store was developed using Lotus Domino and the code was complex for what should have been something quite simple. The deadline for completing the work was very near and I felt there was a real risk that the changes I made could break code elsewhere in the store. The Domino development environment is very poor and as far as I'm aware there isn't any unit testing software available for it. The only thing I could think of was do testing of the web pages but it was going to have to be done outside of the Domino software.

Being familiar with NUnit from my .Net development it was an easy decision to use it for this task, however I had never used NUnit for testing web pages before. A quick google and I discovered quite a few open source candidates for web testing tools that integrate with NUnit and Watin looked extremely easy to use and the web site gave a few good examples.

So, Watin and NUnit were chosen and some tests quickly developed. I've got to say Watin was extremely easy to use and within the afternoon I had a suite of tests ready and the next day I was able to start on developing the rest of the store. It worked incredibly well and I felt that my confidence was much greater in the changes I had made and I swear my actual code improved as well.

It just goes to prove you don't have to be developing a .Net application to benefit from .Net technology. I would recommend Watin and NUnit for any web developer whatever platform your developing on.