Fifteen Free Tools to Help With Testing

There are a great many articles, blog posts, and presentations that discuss automation frameworks and strategies.  But even the most robust automation framework won't eliminate the need to do exploratory testing.  There will always be situations where we need to generate a large amount of text to test a text field or where we need to encode a string in HTML to test for cross-site scripting.  In this week's post, I share fifteen of my favorite free tools that make testing faster and easier.  

Text Tools:

1. Letter Count:  This tool will count the characters or words in a block of text.  I use it for creating strings with a specific character count when I test text fields.

2. Lorem Ipsum Generator: I use this tool when I need to generate large amounts of text for text fields where a user will be able to enter several paragraphs of text.

3. Convert Case: This tool comes in handy when I'm testing with Postman and my assertions are expecting the exact casing for string comparison.  Convert Case will set all the characters in a string to lower case, upper case, sentence case, alternating case, and more.

JSON Tools:

4. Pretty Print: JSON objects need indentation to be easily readable.  This tool will take care of all of the indentation and spacing for you.  This is especially helpful when you receive flattened JSON in a response and you want to be able to read through it.

5. Online JSON Viewer: This tool will flatten your JSON for you by removing all the white spaces, which is helpful when you need to use your JSON in code.

6. JSON Lint: I use this tool whenever I'm using JSON in a test and getting 400 errors.  I paste the JSON into the tool and it will tell me whether my JSON is valid.  If it's not valid, it shows me the line with the error.

Encoding and Decoding Tools:

7. URL Encoder/Decoder: This tool is great for testing cross-site scripting.  Simply paste in your script and it will encode it in valid HTML format for you.

8. JWT.IO: This official JWT documentation includes a tool that will decode a JWT.  It's really helpful for testing authorization, because you can see exactly what information your JWT is sending.  

9. Base 64 Decode and Encode: When you have an image or string that's been encoded into Base 64, this is an easy way to decode it.  

GUID Tools:

10. GUID Generator: I often need random GUIDs for my testing, and this tool will generate as many as I need.

11. GUID Test and Validate: I use this tool to check GUIDs to make sure that they are valid. 

Miscellaneous Tools:

12. Rubular: This is a regex editor that allows you to put in a regex, add a string to test, and find out whether your string matches the regex.  It is specifically designed for Ruby but can be used with other languages as well.  

13. NumVerify: This tool is helpful when you are testing international phone numbers.  It lets you know whether a given number is valid, and which country it is valid in.  

14. WePay Testing: I use this site when I need a fake bank account to test with.  It also lists fake credit card numbers for use in testing.  Some of the features may be specific to Chase Bank.  

15. Online Random File Generator: When you need to test files of a very specific size, this tool uses random strings to generate a file with exactly the size you need.

Just as we use tools in our daily life to make our tasks easier, these free online tools can help speed up our testing, giving us more time to write test automation or do further exploratory testing.  

What are your favorite free tools for testing?  Let me know in the comments below!