If anything breaks, you’ll be the first to know. Ghost Inspector is an automated browser testing tool for continuously monitoring websites. Many of those websites run on WordPress. After lots of demand from Ghost Inspector users, they’ve built a plugin to show your Ghost Inspector test results right inside your WordPress admin panel. The plugin enables you to display the latest test results for a single suite on the dashboard of any self-hosted WordPress installation. The WordPress plugin is not required to use Ghost Inspector, though.
- Run your tests with various versions of Chrome and Firefox, with more browsers on the way.
- A wide range of screen sizes are available including mobile and tablet for testing responsive designs.
- Run your tests from over 16 data centers around the world. Your test run will use a local IP address from that region. Frankfurt currently is the closest location to Zürich.
Web Test Recorder
The Ghost Inspector account includes an extension for recording and saving automated tests right in your browser. This allows you to record and play browser tests quickly and easy, with the option to jump into their codeless test editor afterwards for more advanced functionality. The test recording extension is available for Chrome and Firefox. After installing the extension, a Ghost Inspector icon will appear in your browser toolbar.
After logging in, you will then be presented with a button to «Start recording». The extension works by recording the actions you perform in the browser, such as clicking and filling in forms, so that those actions can be formed into a test and the same sequence can be re-run from the Ghost Inspector service. Once you click “Start recording” the extension will begin recording your actions. The recording is completely transparent, but Ghost Inspector’s toolbar icon will turn green when recording is underway.
In addition to recording actions, the extension can also record “Assertions”. Assertion are confirmations that something is true. For example, you might assert that an element exists on the page or contains specific text. They are helpful to verify that your test is working as it should and control its flow. During the recording process, you can switch from recording actions to recording assertions by clicking the Ghost Inspector toolbar icon and the “Make assertions” button.
About Ghost Inspector
Ghost Inspector launched in 2014 in Seattle with the goal of providing a comprehensive and approachable product for testing websites and web applications using browser automation. The service ensures that your website is always working as expected and alerts you when something breaks. This is achieved by continually accessing your website with an automated web browser and interacting with it just as a real person would. If your shopping cart isn’t working properly, it can be caught by a Ghost Inspector test instead of a manual QA tester, or worse, a live customer. Ghost Inspector expands your quality assurance efforts by automating and scheduling repeatable tests, freeing up your QA team to focus on other things.
Browser automation has been available for years with a plethora of APIs, tools, libraries and services. However, setting up a complete solution means researching and learning a large number of products, then gluing them all together into a complex pipeline. This is a very technical (and frankly, unpleasant) hurdle which often causes teams to shy away from doing this type of very valuable automated testing.
Ghost Inspector provides a single, easy-to-use product that lowers this technical hurdle and allows teams to benefit from end-to-end testing with browser automation.
Credits
- Beitragsbild von Dominik Van Opdenbosch
- Ghost Inspector Documentation: Web Test Recorder
- YouTube Video: WordPress Witchcraft – How to Test Your CMS
