“Search” feature can be a useful exercise which helps you practice building test ideas. This document initiates with a set of test ideas for search function with using heuristics and oracles.
When you are testing for any products, sometimes you will catch the Search function, it can be specific for searching an item which satisfies given conditions like searching an invoice with an ID, or it can be general with a keyword for entire of the web application. Assuming the Search feature under your test is like the image below.
The following test ideas as a result from the breakdown with mind-map which can be downloaded at MeU Solutions website.I. User Types

1. Users with solid experience about your product domain, so check what the result from Searching with specific keywords, or with complexly combined keywords
2. Users are new (insufficient domain knowledge), so check what the outcome from Searching with popular keywords, general keywords, …

II. Comparison (use a comparable feature likes Google Search)

1. Check what the result from the Search with wildcard characters.
2. Check what the result when the user tries to search a file type (.jpg, .doc,..).
3. Check with exact phase (the phase in a quote “ “).
4. Can we use minus (“-“) eliminate results with certain words.

III. Error Handling

1. Check what the result of an empty value.
2. Check what the result of a long text.

• Max Length.
• Max Length – 1.
• Max Length + 1.

3. Check with Spaces.

• At Begin.
• At Middle.
• At End.
• All characters are spaces.

IV. Security

1. Check with SQL Injection.
2. Check Cross Site Scripting (XSS).
3. If the “Search” is using API, check if it is a secure API and how results encrypted & transmitted over the Internet.
4. Check what is stored in cookies.
5. View and explore Source Code.
6. Is it necessary to use HTTPs instead of HTTP?

V. Performance

1. Check how fast the Search works with the number of results.
2. Check how the Search performs with the number of users.
3. Check and monitor the request & response time with the various search.

VI. Interface & Hotkeys

1. 1. Check how text displayed in the Search Text field.
   2. Check with different text formats.
   3. View CSS from the Web Browser to identify any missing (or error) CSS.
   4. Check standard hotkeys such as Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctr+X, Tabs, Enter,…
   5. Check how result outlined with the amount of data returned (Check the Paging).

VII. Compatibility

1. Cross Browser Testing.
2. Check how the Search works with different OS (mobile, Windows, Mac OS,…).

VIII. Data

1. Check with Latin Language Data.
2. Check with Non-Latin Language Data (Chinese, Arabic…).
3. Does the feature allow search with images? If yes,

• Check with various file type: JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, BAT, GIF, PPM,…
• Check with an image file corrupted.
• Check with an image file with various sizes:
  • 0-byte
  • Huge size