Analysis and Testing of Ajax-based Single-page Web Applications

1. A series of fault models that can be automatically checked on any user
interface state, capturing different categories of errors that are likely to
occur in Ajax applications (e.g., DOM violations, error message occurrences),
through (DOM-based) generic and application-specific invariants
which server as oracle.
2. An algorithm for deriving a test suite achieving all transitions coverage
of the state-flow graph obtained during crawling. The resulting test suite
can be refined manually to add test cases for specific paths or states, and
can be used to conduct regression testing of Ajax applications.
3. An open source tool called Atusa implementing the approach, offering
generic invariant checking components as well as a plugin-mechanism
to add application-specific state validators and test suite generation.
4. An empirical validation, by means of two case studies, of the fault revealing
capabilities and the scalability of the approach, as well as the
level of automation that can be achieved and manual effort required to
use the approach.
Given the growing popularity of Ajax applications, we see many opportunities
for using Atusa in practice. Furthermore, the open source and pluginbased
nature of Atusa makes it a suitable vehicle for other researchers interested
in experimenting with other new techniques for testing Ajax applications.
Our future work will include conducting further case studies, as well as
the development of Atusa plugins, capable of spotting security vulnerabilities
in Ajax applications.
Chapter 6. Invariant-Based Automatic Testing of Ajax User Interfaces 151