HttpUnit is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 software testing

Software testing

Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software...

 framework used to perform testing of web sites without the need for a web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

. HttpUnit supports HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 form submission, JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

, HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....

 basic access authentication, automatic page redirection, and cookies

HTTP cookie

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...

. Written in Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

, HttpUnit allows Java test code to process returned pages as text, XML DOM

Document Object Model

The Document Object Model is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. Aspects of the DOM may be addressed and manipulated within the syntax of the programming language in use...

, or containers of forms, tables and links. HttpUnit is well suited to be used in combination with JUnit

JUnit

JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development, and is one of a family of unit testing frameworks collectively known as xUnit that originated with SUnit....

, in order to easily write tests that verify the proper behaviour of a web site.

The use of HttpUnit allows for automated testing of web applications and as a result, assists in regression testing

Regression testing

Regression testing is any type of software testing that seeks to uncover new errors, or regressions, in existing functionality after changes have been made to a system, such as functional enhancements, patches or configuration changes....

.