Test web applications created with help of Adobe Flex
Flash-based web applications created with help of Adobe Flex use a special method for client-server communication. It is based on sending AMF (Action Message Format) messages with binary data. These messages are embedded into regular HTTP requests, so WAPT or WAPT Pro can record and replay such tests. However the original product cannot modify the content of an AMF message to insert any dynamically changing data same way it modifies the parameters of regular requests. This problem is resolved by a special Module for Adobe Flash testing. It can be installed on the system where you run WAPT or the workplace component of WAPT Pro.
The module automatically integrates with the product and enables it to display AMF messages on the request properties and response processing tabs. Since such messages contain hierarchic data structures, WAPT represents them by XML documents. You can insert dynamic values to such documents to parameterize virtual user profiles and make WAPT use different data for each user session in the test.
Responses to AMF requests also contain AMF messages. The processing of such responses is based on the same principle as the processing of a regular HTML page. You may need to extract some data contained inside the message to a variable in order to use that variable in the subsequent requests. This is done with help of the standard XPath function. In the simplest case this function returns the value of a node inside an XML document using the path to that node.
You can use logs to browse the results of execution of a profile containing AMF messages. Both the request and server response are shown as XML documents. A special difference viewer will let you easily compare the content of the current message with the originally recorded one.
