How to Add Growl Notifications to Your Tests

Intro

Good test reports are a fundamental component of successful test automation, but running down a test failure by looking at a test report can be a real pain sometimes. Oftentimes, you're left to decipher debug statements, or go through things piece by piece -- all for the sake of trying to track down a transient issue.

A Solution

By leveraging something like jQuery Growl you can output non-interactive debugging statements directly to the page you're testing.

With Growl way you can see helpful information and more-likely correlate it to the test actions that are being taken. This can a boon for your test runs when coupled with screenshots and/or video recordings of your test runs

Let's step through an example of how to set this up.

About The Author

Dave Haeffner is the original writer of Elemental Selenium -- a free, once weekly Selenium tip newsletter that's read by thousands of testing professionals. He also created and maintains the-internet (an open-source web app that's perfect for writing automated tests against).

Dave has helped numerous companies successfully implement automated acceptance testing; including The Motley Fool, ManTech International, Sittercity, and Animoto. He is also an active member of the Selenium project and has spoken at numerous conferences and meetups around the world about automated acceptance testing.