automated testing on command line only servers (i.e. without X)

Archives Agile Web Application Development with Yii1.1 and
1

In chapter 3 the Agile Web Dev with Yii book by Jeffrey Winesett it is recommended to do automated testing using PHPUnit and Selenium remote control.

That’s fine for a server which has a graphic interface but most production servers, in my experience, are shell access only. Correct me if I am wrong but it seems that you can’t make selenium work on that type of server as it lacks the graphic interface to be able to run the various browsers for the tests.

I figure it would be nice to run selenium from a remote client but it seems it needs to be on the same server as PHPUnit.

Is there a way of doing these automated tests on shell only servers?

2

Maybe try an internet search with keywords like "Selenium testing on headless servers". Should result in various examples that might help you out. Here is one about how to automate your Selenium functional tests from a Hudson CI build on a "headless" linux server:

Hope this helps.

3

Thanks. That looks good. I will test drive and report back on the experience.