I have a peculiar interest in testing tools… I’ve mentioned JMeter (which is more of a stress testing tool) a couple times before, I just found a new one on the Jakarta site call Latka, which “… is a functional (end-to-end) testing tool. It is implemented in Java, and uses an XML syntax to define a series of HTTP (or HTTPS) requests and a set of validations used to verify that the request was processed correctly.”

The cool thing about Latka is the non Java part… anyone that understands a little XML can create and/or edit an xml document that defines an ‘test’ and then run it using the Latka engine. So for instance, here at Mindseye our QA team is composed of invididuals with a small amount of programming experience. They could easily create a Lakta test using the xml syntax and then automate the testing of various applications using Latka. Still not convinced, here’s a sample test:

<?xml version=”1.0″ standalone=”no”?>
<!DOCTYPE suite PUBLIC “-//Apache Software Foundation/DTD Latka Test Suite 1.0/EN”
   “http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/latka/dtds/1.0/suite.dtd”>
<suite defaultHost=”http://www.mindseye.com” label=”mindseye”>
   <request path=”/whymindseye/default.cfm” label=”why you should choose mindseye” method=”get” secure=”false” followRedirects=”true”>
      <validate>
      <statusCode code=”200″ />
      <regexp pattern=”What drives landmark companies” />
      </validate>
   </request>
</suite>

Save this to a file and then type:

latka file:PATH_TO_FILE

from the command line. It should check that the page http://www.mindseye.com/whymindseye/default.cfm returns an HTTP status code 200 and that it contains the phrase “What drives landmark companies”.

Unfortunately, Latka doesn’t appear that anyone is working on it (at least since last July).

On a related note, I also found this Slashdot discussion on “Testing Products for Web Applications?“.