Automating Repetitive Tasks on Web-Based IDEs via an Editable and Reusable Capture-Replay Technique

Web-based IDEs are more and more popular because developers can create or modify software artifacts in the browser without need to install any local development tool and spend valuable development time on system setup and maintenance. For those development tasks using a Web-based IDE, such as configuring programming context and batch test etc., some are frequent and repetitive because they are similar from project to project. Automating the repetitive tasks on Web-based IDEs, regardless of their complexity, would reduce the amount of work that developers must perform to complete the tasks, which would improve the development efficiency of Web applications. In this paper, we put forward a user-friendly approach to automating repetitive tasks on existing Web-based IDEs. The key to the approach is to extend the basic Web-based capture-replay technique with editable and reusable features, which are necessary for automation because some operations are redundant, as well as developers should recognize and define repetitive tasks. Moreover, we develop a supporting tool for the approach. In the case study, we introduce how the approach is used to support automating repetitive tasks on Web-based IDEs. Case studies verify that the approach can improve the development efficiency very well.