Automate your daily (test) work with AutoIT!

blog, testing

I think it is good habit to be lazy… with the intention to automate as much as possible of your daily work. For example:

  • Every night a full integration build is delivered, and as a tester you need to install this every morning;
  • You need to configure some files before you start an application;
  • Simple regression testing;
  • In general: you need to do x when y happens or to start doing y;
There are a lot  script tools or programming languages that you could use. One of my favorite scripting languages is AutoIT.
The official introduction text from the AutoIT Site:

AutoIt is a freeware Windows automation language. It can be used to script most simple Windows-based tasks.

AutoIt has been in popular use since 1999 and continues to provide users and administrators with an easy way to script the Windows GUI. In February 2004 the latest version of AutoIt – known as AutoIt v3 – was released and added powerful scripting features.

AutoIt v3 was developed in a small team with the help of contributors around the world and this has led to a great set of help files, examples, support forum, mailing list, editor files, and third-party utilities.  Oh, and lets not forget some nice graphics and wallpapers too!

AutoIT has a great support forum, it is almost possible to find a solution for all of your questions related to AutoIT. It has a lot of standard procedures, but also options to call Windows API’s directly (Not sure if that would make your life easier…). Another nice feature is the option to compile your scripts into small executables. It gives you a relative small (approx. 350k) application that contains all required libraries and can be distributed easily in your project/organisation.
I’m going to publish the tools/scripts I build with AutoIT on my blog. Feel free to use them and to improve them for you personal use.
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