Bug Magnet: A Free and Powerful Exploratory Testing Tool

I want to quickly share with you a cool little Chrome extension named Bug Magnet that will help you automate some data validation input scenarios that are commonly known to cause issues.

Once you have the extension installed, you can right-click on any field in a Chrome or Firefox browser and choose some of the most common problematic values and edge cases from its context menu option.

This is awesome because it will save you a bunch of time as well as remind you of some of the more common data input issues that are sure to find bugs in your application.

This extension is also open-source and customizable, so you can download and modify the source code from its GitHub location.

For Firefox implementation, check out Brian D Goad's GitHub project.

How to Install

Let's take a quick look at this exploratory testing tool in action:

• To install, open up a Chrome browser and navigate to: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/bugmagnet
  

• Click on the FREE button.
• Click on the Add button from the Confirm New Extension popup.

Cool! Once it's installed, let's explore some of its options:

Menu Options

• To start with, you need to take these necessary actions:
  • Navigate to http://www.orbitz.com/
  • Right-click on the Check-In field and select the Bug Magnet menu option.

   

• Currently, there are seven content menu options:
  1. Lorems – allows you to add filler text in Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese and Mixed charsets
  2. Text size – allows you to add text strings that are certain lengths, with and without spaces
  3. Names – Different name options like O'Grady, NULL, and other tricky names
  4. E-mail addresses – Valid and Invalid examples, like missing @ and 2 @@
  5. Numbers – Different boundary number options like 0, -1
  6. Whitespace – Tabs and Newline and Leading spaces

  Format exploits like SQL injection and HTML parsing

Exploratory Testing Buddy

In my opinion, this is a great little tool to help you with exploratory testing and is a great reminder of the type of problem user-input issues you should be trying against your application.

Using this tool when doing exploratory testing should help uncover issues with your application, like error handling, boundary-related errors, and security issues.

Also, if you have ever found yourself doing exploratory testing and wondering what values you should try when testing, say, a text box that should only allow integer values. This tool is helpful because it gives convenient access to common problematic values and edge cases.

Even if your application doesn't work in Chrome or is a thick client application, you can use this as a checklist of things to try when performing your exploratory testing.

For More Info On Exploratory Testing

In my latest TestTalks podcast, you’ll discover what foundational principles you need for better agile practices, like exploratory testing, in the new year.

Janet shares great agile tips and tricks to help anyone either trying to improve their current Agile Testing efforts or anyone who wants to start their new 2015 testing projects using solid agile testing good practices.