Tools to check whether links are 404ing

Checking whether all links are working properly in one of the worst nightmares of a tester. Firefox has come with an addon, PINGER to check whether any link is 404ing.

After installing the addon, right click on the page to render the context menu. There will be the option "Ping All links". Click on it to check whether any links are 404ing. Once the test is run, the different links in the page will be colored based on the type of link.

Check the options of pinger addon the see the different options provided.Firefox is claiming that it is much faster than other tools. My own experience also proves the same.

Maven and Selenium

Sample pom for testng based selenium script

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>Sample</groupId>
  <artifactId>Sample</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
 <build>
  <plugins>
             <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.6</version>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.6</source>
                    <target>1.6</target>
                    <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
  </plugins>
 </build>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.testng</groupId>
      <artifactId>testng</artifactId>
      <version>5.8</version>
      <classifier>jdk15</classifier>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
      <artifactId>selenium</artifactId>
      <version>2.0b3</version>
      <type>pom</type>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>



Sample  selenium code


package foo;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverBackedSelenium;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.testng.annotations.AfterClass;
import org.testng.annotations.BeforeClass;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;


public class MavenBackedSelenium
{

    WebDriver webdriver;
    WebDriverBackedSelenium selenium;


    @BeforeClass
    public void firstTest()
    {
        webdriver = new FirefoxDriver();
        selenium = new WebDriverBackedSelenium(webdriver, "");

    }

    @Test
    public void openGoogle(){
        String page = "http://www.google.com";
        selenium.open(page);
        selenium.type("q", "water");
        selenium.click("search");

    }

    @AfterClass
    public void closeSession(){
        selenium.close();
    }

}