Comment For web app: automatic 'smoke test' via link check (Score 1) 248
For a Web app, a link checker can act as an automatic 'smoke test'. While link checkers do not substitute for unit tests and coverage matrices, they offer a nice trade-off as a low-cost, automatically-expanding tool that can uncover problems quickly.
Any link checker will do for well-linked 'public' pages which do not require a login. On linux, see checklinks for example.
With some additional code, a link checker can:
* log into a login-protected web app and carry the resulting cookie between queries
* spider from each of a list of start pages (ensuring each of these is hit, at minimum)
* parse resulting HTML for required common components (e.g. header/footer), as well as for human-readable error messages like the text "Cannot display ..."
* limit redundant visits to same 'state' with different parameters (requires a URL scheme with identifiable finite state)
For an example of a FOSS link checker with these features, see morebot.
Any link checker will do for well-linked 'public' pages which do not require a login. On linux, see checklinks for example.
With some additional code, a link checker can:
* log into a login-protected web app and carry the resulting cookie between queries
* spider from each of a list of start pages (ensuring each of these is hit, at minimum)
* parse resulting HTML for required common components (e.g. header/footer), as well as for human-readable error messages like the text "Cannot display
* limit redundant visits to same 'state' with different parameters (requires a URL scheme with identifiable finite state)
For an example of a FOSS link checker with these features, see morebot.
