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WAAT using HttpSniffer

anandbagmar edited this page Nov 5, 2012 · 3 revisions

Approach

This is a generic approach to Web Analytics Test Automation. Regardless of the end-product doing Web Analytics reporting and analysis (example: Omniture, Google Analytics, etc.), you can use this approach to test, in an automated way, if correct name/value properties are being reported by the product / system under test.

This approach captures TCP packets on the network layer, from all the network devices available. Based on the criteria specified in your tests, only those relevant packets are filtered out, and used for analysis and verifications.

Limitation

Because of the limitation listed in the FAQs about doing Web Analytic validation in a pure https environment, the HttpSniffer approach will not work in such a (pure-https) environment. An alternative is to use WAAT's JsSniffer plugin approach.

Setup 3rd-party libraries

In order to enable packet capturing, the WAAT framework needs helps of some 3-rd party open-source libraries. These libraries are available for various different operating systems in the download section of the WAAT project. Refer to the Jpcap Setup section for platform specific install instructions.

Define Test data

Provide the test data to be validated for each action in an xml file. Sample XML file is provided here.

Test code changes

You will need to make the changes shown HttpSniffer test changes in your existing / new tests.