A new release of the Open Source java GUI-Less browser is available, which allows high-level manipulation of web pages, such as filling forms, clicking links, accessing attributes and values of specific elements within the pages, you do not have to create lower-level requests of TCP/IP or HTTP, but just getPage(url), find a hyperlink, click() and you have all the HTML, JavaScript, and Ajax are automatically processed. The most common use of HtmlUnit is test automation of web pages (even with complex JavaScript libraries, like jQuery and Google Web Toolkit), but it can also be used for web scraping, or downloading website content. The main enhancements of this release:

1. Use cache for all kinds of (cacheable) content
2. Fix many issues with (de)serialization
3. Add a mechanism to save the complete page along with images
4. Add support for Proxy Auto-Config
5. Better support for XHTML pages
6. And as usual, various bug fixes

You can find more information in the official website, the development team is looking forward to getting your feedback.

Congratulations HtmlUnit team on the new release. One thing that needs saying: HtmlUnit is very good for testing Ajax applications. Since 2.4 it has passed the GWT, YUI and other validation test suites. We're hosting a set of meet-ups on HtmlUnit, Selenium, and other open source test frameworks. Details are at http://workshop.pushtotest.com. We will be in Prague next Friday, followed by Brussels, London and Paris. -Frank Cohen http://www.pushtotest.com

Looks good. But the tests should be written in a Scripting language (Groovy?), not Java.

Looks good. But the tests should be written in a Scripting language (Groovy?), not Java.

Have a look at WebTest, you can use XML or Groovy.

Looks good. But the tests should be written in a Scripting language (Groovy?), not Java.

Why? In my experience, HtmlUnit has worked well when used from Java and Jython (and anything else that instantiates Java classes.) And HtmlUnit also works well for test utility interpreters. For example, we wrote a ScriptRunner (SeleniumHtmlUnit) for Selenium that interprets the Selenese table format and uses HtmlUnit to communicate to the application. I don't see why you would ask someone to make a choice? -Frank Cohen http://www.pushtotest.com

Looks good. But the tests should be written in a Scripting language (Groovy?), not Java.

Why?

For the same reasons Web-pages are usually written in s Scripting language (even JSP) and not Java.

Looks good. But the tests should be written in a Scripting language (Groovy?), not Java.

Why?

For the same reasons Web-pages are usually written in s Scripting language (even JSP) and not Java.

Since when is JSP a scripting language? That last comment made even less sense than the first. Java is just great for writing tests. Scripting languages are OK too. Congrats on the HtmlUnit release. It is indeed a great tool and I'm glad to have it as an integral part of the JSFUnit project. Stan Silvert www.jsfunit.org

Looks good. But the tests should be written in a Scripting language (Groovy?), not Java.

Well, this sounds nonsense. Can you explain why the test SHOULD be written in scripting languages, or why is Java not a good language to write tests? WIlliam Martinez Pomares

HtmlUnit is great tool. We use it extensively for our Web data Extraction products and services. Thanks for wonderful tool.