Input contract testing of graphical user interfaces

Abstract

User inputs are critical for the security, safety, and reliability of software systems. This paper proposes a new concept called user input contracts, which is an integral part of a design-by-contract supplemented development process, and a model-based testing approach to detect violations of user input contracts. The approach generates test cases from an input contract integrated with graph-based model of user interface specification and applies them to the system under consideration. The paper presents a proof-of-concept tool that has been developed and used to validate the approach by experiments. The experiments are conducted on a web-based system for marketing tourist services to analyze input robustness of system under consideration with respect to user input contracts.