Simpler Exploratory Testing with Bug Magnet

In exploratory testing one tries to figure out how well the system under test reacts to edge cases and special input data. It’s less structured than acceptance or unit tests and therefore may help you find different kinds of problems. Good input data is not all it takes, but it can help you a lot. When you prefer to use your time to test instead of cultivating the necessary data, then you should try Bug Magnet.

 

Installation

Bug Magnet is an extension for Chrome and can be installed with one click in the Chrome web store or at the official web page:

Bug Magnet installation

(When the installation is done you should make a page reload on the site you want to use Bug Magnet on. Otherwise it may not be able to post data into the form fields.)

To use Bug Magnet you simply click on the input field of your choice, make a right click and select the appropriate input value:
Bug Magnet in action

 

Special Inputs

The great value of Bug Magnet comes from the nicely cultivated collection of built-in inputs. You can select a text of a certain size (like 32k+1) or one that has special characters in it. That kind of input most likely will result in an error – when not you may have found a possible problem with an unbounded input field. In either case you can keep digging and find more critical situations your unit tests don’t yet cover.

Another nice set of inputs is hidden under “Format exploits” where you find things like the often used SQL injection syntax Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;--. If this passes your students table is gone, therefore try this only on your test system!

You don’t have to be all negative when you use Bug Magnet. There are plenty of valid e-mail addresses that you may consider being wrong but aren’t. If your users have such a special e-mail it may take a long time until you understand why they didn’t buy at your shop. By testing those cases that should pass you may prevent problems before they cost you a lot of money.

 

Conclusion

Bug Magnet is a great help to test web applications with specially prepared input values. The best part is that Bug Magnet is not only free but open source. Therefore you can look at the code and even fork it on GitHub.

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