Automated Website Testing with Ghost Inspector

Table of Contents:

• What is Ghost Inspector?
• How to use Ghost Inspector for your Test suite?
• Main features of Ghost Inspector.
• Advantages of Ghost Inspector.
• Limitations of Ghost Inspector.
• Conclusion.

What is Ghost Inspector?

Ghost Inspector is an automated browsing testing tool that checks for problems with your website or application. The interesting thing is that it is also known as a “script-less” tool because there is no need to know how to program. It is time saving and effective tool that carries out operations in a browser, to ensure the users that everything is working properly.

How to use Ghost Inspector for your Test Suite?

1. The user goes to this link and creates a ghost inspector account.
   https://app.ghostinspector.com/account/create
2. Now, the user searches for Chrome extension on their chrome browser and opens chrome extension.
3. After that, in the chrome extension user search for Ghost Inspector and click on add to chrome, as shown in the figure below.

4. Now, the user clicks on this icon.

4. Now, the user enters their credentials and Sign in to the ghost inspector account.

4. After login in ghost inspector account, the user selects “create a new test” and then starts to record.

4. Then, the user opens any site to perform actions and all the actions will record in Ghost Inspector test suits.
5. Finally, the user clicks on the “Finish” button to close the session or click on mark assertions if the user wants to add any assertion in your test case.

4. When a user clicks on the “finish”, it will show the user a button “View test” to view your recorded actions and tests. Click on this button to view your Test Result.

Main features of Ghost Inspector

1. Ghost Inspector Inspector gives a test recorder device to both Chrome and Firefox that permits you to record activities and assertions directly in your browser.
2. The tests run in parallel as long as they execute as soon as possible. So, they do not run in a certain order (Keep an eye on that!). If the testing environment does not support a lot of loads, you can limit the number of concurrent tests, so as not to overload it.
3. Ghost Inspector gives a huge amount of valuable settings for your tests. These can be set exclusively for tests and most can default at the suite level. Here are some:
   Browser engine choices

• HTTP authentication
• Custom user agent string
• Custom HTTP headers
• Screen resolution
• Screenshot comparison
• Geolocations
• Various notifications
• Service integrations
• Automated Scheduling

4. Rather than coding your own experiments, you can construct them rapidly and effectively utilizing an instinctive interface. Run your tests promptly as you’re building them. You can likewise record tests at first, at that point edit them utilizing this interface a short time later.

Advantages of Ghost Inspector

• It allows you to do an image comparison, in the style of Applitools (but much more limited).

• Ghost Inspector gives you the ability to “modularize” your tests by importing the steps of one test into another by adding an “Import steps from test” step in the test editor. This allows you to segment out certain repeated operations and easily reuse them.
• Apparently, it supports data-driven testing, since you can load a file with data.
• Ghost Inspector offers a range of built-in variables that can be used for making unique values and creating filler details.
• Something very interesting is that users can choose from where in the world to do the execution.

Limitations of Ghost Inspector

• Inability to bypass Google ReCaptcha while testing — Right now in the project, we also need to login into an e-commerce platform-Shopify, which does not meet the expectations that we have for our automation strategy.
• Some issues not resolved — Some issues are not found out or detected by this tool. This is because of this tool. Many times an individual needs to work alongside this product.
• Confusing — The interface and the usage techniques of this tool can be tricky sometimes and not quite understandable by a non-technical individual.
• Only supports Firefox and Chrome — This tool does not support multiple browsers.
• You can’t see the execution running live on your browser, but have to wait for it to finish in order to see the video of the execution. It’s very difficult to correct errors or strange behaviors, etc.

Conclusion

Overall, Ghost Inspector is a very beneficial tool as it offers speed credibility, and efficiency. It aims at providing the user with the best online testing experience he/she could ever get. I think Ghost Inspector is an excellent alternative for the tester who does not know how to program. But, one can not only depend on this tool for automation strategy as it is quite limited.