Question

I’m looking for a test automation framework I can embed in an iFrame, to describe and simulate browsing, which will probably be translate to JQuery-simulate events.

Answer 1

What you’re trying to do is difficult and uncommon, and for good reason. Firstly let’s take the technical aspect.

Dealing with your chosen solution:

I’ve not managed to come up with any frameworks that will do what you want, but you may want to look at the accepted answer for How to communicate between iframe and the parent site? – what you’re trying to do operates in the opposite direction, but the principle is the same. Essentially there is a good chance that you will not be able to achieve what you want to do unless you control both the outer and inner websites, and even then, it won’t work in all browsers.

Finding a better way:

So now that the technical side has been tackled, here’s the real meat of the matter – are you really sure this is what you want to be doing? A number of scenarios with different solutions:

1. You’re guiding someone through using a service you control:

   Create a guided copy of the page, with the interactions built in – then embed this.

2. You’re guiding someone through using a third party service:

   Record a video, you can even include a voiceover and closed captions to explain why the user must do certain things, and which parts are optional. This would also work well with the above scenario.

3. You’re streamlining an interaction with a service you control:

   This gives you options – you almost certainly don’t want to embed the page, but want to work with the backend, either directly or through a RESTful inteface.

4. You’re streamlining an interaction with a third party service:

   The RESTful interface is your friend, if the service has one, if not, see if they have any other sort of API – if they don’t contact them and see if you can work something out.

So what is the issue you are actually trying to solve?

Closing comments

When faced with a technical problem it’s often tempting to accept the first solution you come up with, but be aware, it’s probably not the best. This is not to say that you should spend endless time deliberating over what to do for each and every problem, but you should probably spend at least another couple of minutes considering the problem before choosing what to do, and if you get stuck, try something different.

It may well be that you can’t think of any other solution that could possibly solve your problem, and you might be right, but if you can’t get it to work, and you come looking for help, please let people know what the problem is that you’re trying to solve, because as I have found, there is always someone smarter; there is always someone who, if they squint hard enough, will have seen something like your problem before; there is always a better way to do it, it’s just that no-one else may have discovered it yet.