Question

Are there elegant methods for simulating user behavior (clicks, inputs) using JavaScript or PHP? I’m envisaging something along the lines of:

1. Enter something into a text box.
2. Click on the submit button
3. Click on a link that shows up on the following page (the location I
   can predict, but not the URL itself)
4. Aggregate the page results
   and return to me.

It somehow screams iFrame to me, but are there other ways? Also, the content would be an external website, so iFrame cross-scripting would raise errors.

Answer 1

Take a look at Selenium. It’s being developed to do automated tests on websites and can certenly do the task you described.

You can also export the tests as PHPUnit test.