Automated Graphical User Interface Testing Framework—Evoguitest—Based on Evolutionary Algorithms

Software testing has become an important phase in software applications’ lifecycle. Graphical User Interface (GUI) components can be found in a large number of desktops and web applications and also in a wide variety of mobile devices. In the last years GUIs have become more and more complex and interactive, their testing process requiring an interaction with the GUI components, mainly by generating mouse, keyboard and touch events. Given their increased importance, GUIs verification for correctness contributes to the establishment of the correct functionality of the corresponding software application. The current research on GUI testing methodologies primarily focuses on automated testing. This paper presents EvoGUITest, a novel automated GUI testing framework based on evolutionary algorithms which tests the GUI independently from the application code itself. The framework is designed for testing GUIs of web applications. Results have been compared, based on specific metrics, with others existing frameworks.