FlexMonkey :: Flex UI Testing Tool

Latest Version of Open-Source Testing Tool for Flex Applications Delivers Full Flex 4.0 Spark Component Support

Broomfield, CO – May 11th, 2010 – Gorilla Logic, an enterprise IT consulting services firm known for its top consulting talent, today announced the availability of FlexMonkeyTM 4.0 Beta 1. The new version provides support for the latest Flex 4 release from Adobe, including the entire Spark component set. With over 6,200 registered users, FlexMonkey has become the industry standard for automated record and playback testing of Adobe Flex interfaces used by companies around the world.

“The FlexMonkey 4.0 Beta 1 release delivers what our users have been asking for: support for Flex 4 including all Spark components. This lets FlexMonkey continue to answer to the Flex community’s need for quality assurance and unit testing for Flex applications,” said Eric Owens, FlexMonkey Guru, Gorilla Logic.

As a leading consulting services firm specializing in enterprise application development using Adobe Flex, HTML5, Java and mobile application development, Gorilla Logic developed FlexMonkey to deliver unparalleled quality to their Fortune 500 clients. In addition to providing a forum for the community of FlexMonkey users to assist each other (FlexMonkey Forum), Gorilla Logic also provides annual support contracts, implementation services and custom enhancement development for clients interested in optimizing their implementation of FlexMonkey.

“We use a continuous integration environment and are deploying FlexMonkey on the desktops of nearly 150 developers. For us, FlexMonkey is an option that cannot be ignored because it was obviously developed with one goal in mind – to facilitate the creation of high-quality Flex applications,” said Josse Brayelle, MAAF Assurances.

FlexMonkey is well suited for use by both developers and QA testers. It provides for regression and functional testing, and can be run from popular build systems and continuous integration environments, like CruiseControl. Gorilla Logic has assisted several companies in setting up their continuous integration environments and ensuring a production quality implementation of FlexMonkey.

In response to FlexMonkey’s value and ease-of use, Jokichi Oguri from HP commented, “The work you guys have done is incredible. May Gorillas rule the earth some day!”

FlexMonkey 4.0 Beta 1 is available today at www.gorillalogic.com/flexmonkey. Gorilla Logic also offers complete FlexMonkey training, implementation and off-shore testing services.

About Gorilla Logic

Gorilla Logic is an enterprise application development services and consulting firm known industry-wide for providing “gorilla” consultants that can dramatically improve development team productivity. Gorilla Logic has long demonstrated their industry-leading expertise in enterprise Java / JEE development, Adobe Flex / RIA development, and mobile device
application development, including the iPhone, Android and Blackberry. Gorilla Logic has been engaged to ensure the success of their most mission critical projects by Fortune 500 companies as well as small and medium-sized businesses and startups in industries ranging from financial services to entertainment to aerospace and the government sector.

Gorilla Logic also develops open source tools for Java, Flex, and iPhone developers.

• FoneMonkey (www.gorillalogic.com/fonemonkey)
• FlexMonkey (www.gorillalogic.com/flexmonkey)
• MonkeyWrench (www.gorillalogic.com/monkeywrench)
• OpenGXE (www.gorillalogic.com/opengxe)

For more information about Gorilla Logic, please visit www.gorillalogic.com or email info@gorillalogic.com.

Gorilla Logic Media Contact
Chad Sanderson
303.974.7088 ext. 7002
chad.sanderson@gorillalogic.com

jonr FlexMonkey

Open-Source Functional Testing Tool for Adobe Flex Applications – New and Improved!

Broomfield, CO – March 3rd, 2010 – Gorilla Logic, an enterprise IT consulting services firm known for its top consulting talent, today announced the availability of FlexMonkeyTM 1.0 GA. With a rapidly growing user base that recently surpassed 5,000 registered users, FlexMonkey is a de facto standard for automated functional testing of Flex applications. After eight months of maturing in a beta status, FlexMonkey is now available for production use by developers and quality assurance professionals everywhere.

“FlexMonkey has been invaluable for us in testing Adobe Air applications. It has found bugs and regressions on several occasions, preventing them from ever reaching customers. And…I had everything I needed to add FlexMonkey tests into our continuous integration environment,” said Michael Portuesi, Principal Engineer, Zoodles.com.

FlexMonkey is an open source testing tool providing record/playback functional testing of
Adobe Flex applications. FlexMonkey 1.0 GA delivers the features and improvements most
requested by the FlexMonkey user community including:

• “Wait For” handling – removes reliance on the PauseCommand by defining conditions that pause a script until true
• Fuzzy Bitmap Compare – the Verify command for bitmap images now allows for user controlled tolerances in color comparisons
• Simplified Setup – new easier process for configuring FlexMonkey testing of an application
• Compatibility – out of the box compatibility with multiple Flex SDKs (3.3, 3.4.1 and
  3.5)
• Code Compiling – easier customization and compilation of FlexMonkey source

“FlexMonkey keeps me from becoming exactly that – a monkey chained to a desk manually testing our software,” said Max Cameron, Co-Founder, Big Bang Technology, Inc. “Simply put, FlexMonkey kicks ass. It softens the enormous overhead of functional testing, and more importantly, it let’s my engineers get some sleep at night.”

FlexMonkey is well-suited for use by both developers and QA testers. It provides for regression and functional testing, and can be run from popular build systems and continuous integration environments, like CruiseControl.

“FlexMonkey 1.0 GA marks a major milestone for the FlexMonkey open source project and the Flex community who have come to rely on it. We encourage all existing users to upgrade to this new version which paves the way for our upcoming FlexMonkey releases for Flex 4, as well as our FlexMonkey/Selenium bridge,” said Stu Stern, CEO, Gorilla Logic.

FlexMonkey 1.0 GA is available today at www.gorillalogic.com/flexmonkey. Gorilla Logic also offers complete FlexMonkey training and testing services. Customers interested in early access to FlexMonkey for the Flex 4 SDK and the FlexMonkey/Selenium bridge should contact Gorilla Logic at www.gorillalogic.com/who-we-are/contact.

About Gorilla Logic

Gorilla Logic is an enterprise application development services and consulting firm known industry-wide for providing “gorilla” consultants that can dramatically improve development team productivity. Gorilla Logic has long demonstrated their industry-leading expertise in enterprise Java / JEE development, Adobe Flex / RIA development, and mobile device application development, including the iPhone. Gorilla Logic has been engaged to ensure the success of their most mission critical projects by Fortune 500 companies as well as small and mediums-zed businesses and startups in industries ranging from financial services to entertainment to aerospace and the government sector.

Gorilla Logic also develops open source tools for Java, Flex, and iPhone developers.
FoneMonkey (www.gorillalogic.com/fonemonkey)
FlexMonkey (www.gorillalogic.com/flexmonkey)
MonkeyWrench (www.gorillalogic.com/monkeywrench)
OpenGXE (www.gorillalogic.com/opengxe)

For more information about Gorilla Logic, please visit www.gorillalogic.com or email info@gorillalogic.com.

###

Gorilla Logic Media Contact
Chad Sanderson
303.974.7088 ext. 7002
chad.sanderson@gorillalogic.com

jonr FlexMonkey

What is FlexMonkey?

FlexMonkey is an open source Adobe AIR application used for testing Flex and AIR applications. It provides the functionality to record, playback, and verify Flex UI interactions. It also generates ActionScript / fluint tests that you can easily include within a continuous integration environment.

Who is FlexMonkey for?

Like many in the Flex community, we came to Flex development after many years of developing traditional web applications, where there are multiple tools that allow a developer to simulate a UI client for testing (like HTMLUnit). For testing our Flex user interfaces, we had a strong desire to continue using this paradigm for our developer level testing.

As software consultants, ensuring quality is an important part of what we do. So, we created FlexMonkey to fill the gap between a unit test and what’s really needed to ensure quality (and protect against regression) when developing user interfaces. While we initially created FlexMonkey for developers, many in the FlexMonkey community have found it just as valuable for use in creating QA / Functional tests.

So, we believe that FlexMonkey is useful to both software developers and quality control engineers on Flex development projects.

So, what’s so game changing about it?

If you ask Mike Labriola (one of the Fluint/FlexUnit 4 guys), ‘How do I unit test my Flex user interfaces?’ He will quickly respond, ‘You don’t.’ He won’t tell you this because he doesn’t believe in unit testing (as I can assure you that he strongly believes in Unit Testing), but because there are parts of a user interface that cannot be sufficiently tested with unit tests.

So, as we jump into the reasons why FlexMonkey matters for you, I’ll note that we do not believe that FlexMonkey replaces the need for traditional unit tests. There are still parts of a Flex application that are best tested this way (e.g. service clients, business logic, etc.). If you are building a framework, it’s likely that the majority of your testing will be done through unit tests, but if you are focusing on features and functionality you will likely be able to achieve upwards of 80% of your testing goals with FlexMonkey. Nevertheless, here are the high level places where FlexMonkey changes the game:

1. FlexMonkey fills the gap left between unit testing and a truly successful test suite, as it provides a tool for doing developer level functional tests that replace traditional unit testing activities that developers perform in other tiers of application development.
2. FlexMonkey allows developers to write their user interface code in the most natural way. Typically, when developing a user interface application without a tool to simulate a client of the running application, the code has to be written differently to support testing. This often leads to many unnatural acts, which can be avoided when using FlexMonkey.

   For the Java folks, I like to bring up the SpringFramework here, as it provides us with a powerful example of a framework that largely succeeded because it allows developers to write their code in a natural way. Over the long run, the frameworks and tools that make it possible for developers to work in the most natural way will always win out.

   Tools like FlexMonkey are able to facilitate this simply through the paradigm they provide for testing user interfaces, as they allow developers to test applications without any knowledge of the underlying code.

3. Cost. FlexMonkey is free. So, even though it’s not a perfect tool, it does enable one to build and deploy a successful test suite, a task that is extremely difficult and costly in Flex development without FlexMonkey.

You can find the FlexMonkey project at: http://flexmonkey.gorillalogic.com/

FlexMonkey is built and open-sourced by Gorilla Logic, Inc.

jonr FlexMonkey

In another exciting installment of Jon Rose and James Ward’s Drunk On Software, they chat with FlexMonkey project founder Stu Stern in celebration of the first production release of FlexMonkey. The  conversation may lack a bit of focus, but does have some good info if you stick with it.

FlexMonkey Resources:

• FlexMonkey Project Page
• FlexMonkey project blog
• Adobe Dev Center Article: Testing Flex applications with FlexMonkey 1.0

You can find the original post here: http://www.drunkonsoftware.com/2009/07/14/episode-14-flexmonkey/

jonr Uncategorized

In Stu Stern’s recent InfoQ.com article on UI testing and FlexMonkey, he explains the code-a-little-test-a-little (CALTAL) approach to test driven development with user interface development and walks you through using FlexMonkey to support the theory.

The practice of maintaining automated unit test suites has gained widespread acceptance over the past decade to the point where most developers today either engage in some amount of test writing or at least feel bad for not doing it. This rise in automated unit testing has led to some confusion about who should be testing what. Should developers strive for 100% code coverage with their unit tests, and if so, does that mean we no longer need dedicated QA testers? Many development teams draw the line at the user interface, reasoning that since user interfaces can be exercised with little or no programming they can be tested more economically by dedicated testers, either manually or with specialized testing tools. This division of labor has led many to divide the world of testing into “unit testing” and “functional testing”, with developers providing the former and QA testers providing the latter. In this article we’ll explore how Gorilla Logic’s new, open source Flex user interface automation testing tool, FlexMonkey, can enhance the productivity of both developers and QA testers. FlexMonkey allows developers to incorporate user interface testing into unit test suites and continuous integration environments, and allows QA testers to expand those unit tests to create and maintain comprehensive quality tests.

Enjoy the full article at: http://www.infoq.com/articles/flexmonkey-ui-unit-testing

jonr FlexMonkey, Testing Theory

In his recent Adobe Developer Center article, Eric shows you how to get started using FlexMonkey as part of your development flow.  Check out the article here: Testing Flex applications with FlexMonkey 1.0

jonr FlexMonkey

Gorilla Logic Announces Release of FlexMonkey 1.0, an Open Source Tool for Testing Adobe Flex RIAs

Gorilla Logic, firm known industry-wide for providing “gorilla” consultants that deliver a 10X productivity improvement over other options, today announced the release of FlexMonkey 1.0. FlexMonkey, an open source testing tool for optimizing automated and unit testing of Adobe Flex RIAs, is another example of Gorilla Logic’s commitment to assisting clients and the market in developing the highest-quality applications possible.

”Adobe Flex is the leading standard for enterprise RIA development. When developing Flex-based mission-critical systems for our clients, we needed a production-quality testing tool that would tightly integrate with Flex Builder and FlexUnit,” said Eric Owens, FlexMonkey Product Manager. “FlexMonkey 1.0 is the answer to that need: by automating our interface testing with record/playback functionality, we provide higher quality solutions to our clients. We feel strongly that FlexMonkey should be free and open-sourced, and we’re now providing clients with FlexMonkey training as well as FlexMonkey-based testing services.”

Available since October 2008, Gorilla Logic has used FlexMonkey with a diverse set of clients in a variety of industries ranging from financial services to aerospace to media. During each project FlexMonkey has been an integral part of Gorilla Logic’s quality assurance for clients. Based on this proven value and their unique experience, Gorilla Logic is now offering FlexMonkey Training as well as Testing Services for Adobe Flex applications.

“We have been using FlexMonkey since October 2008 to test our Flex Applications interactively. We evaluated several interactive testing tools, and found FlexMonkey to be much lighter and more agile than the expensive products, even outperforming them in several areas. It is a great product, and the support from the Gorilla Logic team has been superb,” said Tracy Ellis, Manager, SAS (www.sas.com).

FlexMonkey 1.0 is an open-source solution for testing Adobe Flex RIAs and can be downloaded from flexmonkey.gorillalogic.com.  For questions regarding Adobe Flex training / mentoring, functional and load testing using FlexMonkey or other off-shore testing services provided by Gorilla Logic, please visit our website (www.gorillalogic.com) or send an email to info@gorillalogic.com.

About Gorilla Logic

Gorilla Logic is an enterprise application development services and consulting firm known industry-wide for providing “gorilla” consultants that deliver a 10X productivity improvement over other options. With industry-leading expertise in Java-related technologies and Adobe Flex RIA application development, Gorilla Logic has been engaged by Fortune 500 companies in industries ranging from financial services to entertainment to aerospace and government to work on mission critical projects. Gorilla Logic also develops tools to decrease the product development lifecycle and open sources them for the benefit of the market – FlexMonkey (flexmonkey.gorillalogic.com) and OpenGXE (www.gorillalogic.com/opengxe).

For more information about Gorilla Logic, please visit www.gorillalogic.com or email info@gorillalogic.com.

jonr FlexMonkey

You can check out Stu Stern discussing FlexMonkey on a recent episode of the Speak Rich podcast from RIA Revolution. Thanks to Shashank Tiwari for interviewing Stu and covering Gorilla Logic’s favorite testing tool, FlexMonkey.  Enjoy the podcast!

jonr FlexMonkey

Marcin Zreda provided a review on FlexMonkey version 0.8 in a recent blog entry.  He hit on some the key items that set FlexMonkey apart from other Flex testing tools.  A main benefit is that it generates ActionScript code.  Thus, there is nothing new for Flex developers to learn, such as the Ruby programming language with other testing tools.

FlexMonkey generates test scripts in Action Script. It gives us great opportunities to continue work by the test developers, and indeed very easy to integrate with the Continuous Integration tools because the test scripts are the FlexUnit format.

His summary concluded that FlexMonkey is a serious tool in the Flex testing space:

Looking at the whole family of automated GUI testing tools, FlexMonkey certainly deserves a honorable mention – is a complete tool, although version 0.8. Using Continuous Integration and the code repository can quickly combine to create solution very similar to RIATest or other profesional and expensive software.

You can read the full review here: http://www.testandtry.com/2009/04/07/flexmonkey-flex-test-automation-tool-review.

FlexMonkey is built and open sourced by Gorilla Logic, Inc.

jonr FlexMonkey