On: Mechanize 0.2.0 released

[hugs]

Things like Mechanize and HTMLUnit are what I call "HTTP-only protocol drivers" and are not a true-fidelity simulation of the HTML+JavaScript environment. This is exactly the reason I created Selenium in the first place. I had regression bugs in IE and Mozilla that I needed to verify were fixed in the actual browsers. An emulated browser environment like Mechanize or HTMLUnit isn't a real browser that users actually use, so it doesn't solve the regression testing problem I had.

Best of both worlds these days is in driving a headless WebKit (a true browser driver that includes the JS interaction), which will be coming in Selenium 2.

[olaf → hugs]

Thanks, Selenium can replay user interaction sessions, but I need to set e.g. form fields programmatically, is that possible? Maybe CPAN/Gtk2::WebKit is also an option.

[ericb → olaf]

Yes, it is possible, and fairly routine in Selenium. Also, you can execute arbitrary Javascript for whatever else you may need.

[aaronblohowiak → olaf]

you can even use your recorded sessions to spit out the code that you can then use as a template for your code