SHF: Medium: Automated Graphical User Interface Testing with Learning

具有丰富图形用户界面（GUI）的智能手机和平板电脑越来越受欢迎。 成千上万的专业应用程序，被称为应用程序，已经可以在这些移动平台上使用，新发布的应用程序的数量还在继续增加。 这些应用程序的复杂性往往在于用户界面，数据处理要么是次要的，要么委托给后端组件。在使用软件即服务架构的应用程序中也存在类似的情况，其中客户端组件主要由用户界面代码组成。 测试这些应用程序主要涉及GUI测试。现有的自动测试这些接口的技术要么需要一个先验模型的接口，因此很难使用，或盲目操作发送随机用户事件的应用程序，通常无法测试应用程序在令人满意的depth.This项目研究自动GUI测试技术，系统地探索应用程序的状态空间，而不需要一个先验定义的模型。 这个项目背后的一个观点是，用户界面模型的自动构建和界面的测试是可以以互惠互利的方式合作的任务。此外，这项研究的指导原则是设计算法，这些算法的抽象和抽象操作足够简单，可以让不一定了解被测应用程序内部结构的人理解。这样的算法更容易理解，也更容易融入一个整体测试过程，其中包括自动化技术（如本项目中开发的技术）以及手动测试和指导。 在这个项目中开发的技术直接受益于这些应用程序的程序员，并间接受益于移动的和网络应用程序的众多用户。

Smartphones and tablets with rich graphical user interfaces (GUIs) arebecoming increasingly popular. Hundreds of thousands of specializedapplications, called apps, are already available for these mobileplatforms, and the number of newly released apps continues toincrease. The complexity of these apps lies often in the userinterface, with data processing either minor, or delegated to abackend component. A similar situation exists in applications usingthe software-as-a-service architecture, where the client-sidecomponent consists mostly of user interface code. Testing suchapplications predominantly involves GUI testing. Existing automatictechniques for testing these interfaces either require a priori modelsof the interface and are thus hard to use, or operate blindly bysending random user events to the application and are typically unableto test the application in satisfactory depth.This project investigates automatic GUI testing techniques thatsystematically explore the state space of an application withoutrequiring an a priori defined model. One insight behind this projectis that the automatic construction of a model of the user interfaceand the testing of the interface are tasks that can cooperate in amutually beneficial way. Furthermore, a guiding principle throughoutthis research is to design algorithms that operate with abstractionsand heuristics that are simple enough to be understood by humans whodo not necessarily understand the internals of the tested app. Suchalgorithms are easier to comprehend and to incorporate into awholistic test process that includes automated techniques, such as theones developed in this project, and manual testing and guidance. Thetechniques developed in this project benefit directly programmers forthese apps, and indirectly the numerous users of mobile and webapplications.