Contents 1. An overview of UI testing automation 2. Benefits of UI testing automation 3. UI test automation framework overview 4. Four core building blocks of the UI test automation framework 5. Major UI Testing automation frameworks 6. How to select the right UI testing automation framework? 7. How to build a UI test automation framework? 8. Top 10 UI Testing Automation best practices 9. Conclusion

Today, customers have become digitally advanced and need high-quality apps with an amazing User Interface (UI). Undoubtedly the user interface is the first thing that catches today’s digital customer’s attention. If the UI is not impressive enough, then the chances of users switching to a competitor’s platform are much higher. Therefore, all small, medium and large businesses should ensure their apps’ proper and responsive UI to deliver a great user experience (UX) with an intuitive UI. But how can businesses achieve great UI for their apps? It is through leveraging UI testing automation which has been detailed in this blog.

An overview of UI testing automation

UI test automation is validating the proper functioning of UI elements and the front end of an application to enable seamless communication with users on the screen. During automated UI testing, every minute detail of all features of an application’s UI, such as

• Input controls (checkbox, buttons, lists, etc.)

• Navigational controls (search fields, icons, sliders, etc.)

• Information components (notifications, messages, Window pop-ups, etc.)

• Containers (Accordion)

are verified to ensure the app works the same way end-users intend. There are many benefits of UI testing, due to which its significance is high in the software industry.

Benefits of UI testing automation

• Ensures proper functioning of UI elements

• Ensures delivering a great UX

• Helps to increase test coverage as compared to manual testing

• Ensures faster test execution and debugging

• Allows reusability of test scripts

• Delivers accurate test results

• Eliminates the chances of human-prone errors

• Saves time and cost

Undoubtedly, there are many benefits to UI test automation. However, its success relies on the UI test automation framework used to perform testing. Therefore, let us now understand in detail UI test automation frameworks.

UI test automation framework overview

A UI automation testing framework is a collection of libraries that work together. It is not a single tool or process but a collection of tools and techniques working together to support UI test automation of any application. The framework helps to make UI test automation code reusable, maintainable, and stable. It also saves businesses from costly defects. Various frameworks (open-source and commercial) are available in the market. However, testers can even choose to build their custom test automation frameworks that might be off-the-shelf or custom-made, all these frameworks comprise four core building blocks.

Four core building blocks of the UI test automation framework

The package manager:

The package manager helps to access various features of the building blocks of the UI test automation framework. It helps to load the required specific libraries for each block into the framework and declares their version numbers. The version numbers are significant when there are different versions of libraries, and they might have changes, bugs, or features that are not needed in the framework. The package manager not only gives access to all libraries but also provides an easy reference for plugins, scripts, shortcuts, and more.

The runner:

To run the automated checks, a runner is required. A runner reads files that testers create and tells which checks are to be run. The runner enables testers to create the shell of an automated check such that whatever is placed inside the shell will be executed.

The UI driver:

A UI driver interacts with an application UI in real-time and programmatically sends instructions to the browser to do things like click links, fill forms, detect if elements exist on a page, etc.

The assertion library:

The assertion library determines if the flow of UI test automation has been successful or not, resulting in a pass or fail, and tells if something has changed in the system. Usually, some data is extracted near the end of test automation to determine if expectations are confirmed. The assertion library helps to compare the expectation with the captured data.

Let us now look at various frameworks testers can leverage for UI testing.

Major UI Testing automation frameworks

Selenium:

Selenium is an open-source test automation framework that supports multiple programming languages, OS, browsers, and platforms. Selenium automates web browser interaction, where test scripts are written to perform different user actions on the web application UI, making Selenium apt for UI Testing.

Appium:

Appium is an open-source test automation framework used to test native, hybrid, and mobile web apps. It is highly flexible and supports various programming languages, OS, and browsers. Appium enhances code reusability as the same API can be used for running tests on multiple platforms/OS.

Cypress:

Cypress is an open-source test automation framework that allows fast, easy, and reliable automated UI testing. It runs on JavaScript and is considered one of the best test automation frameworks. It allows parallel testing and can easily be integrated with CI tools. It comes with a recording feature that allows recording test automation processes and automatically captures screenshots.

Serenity:

Also known as Serenity BDD, it is an open-source library that is used for writing regression tests and acceptance tests. Serenity provides detailed test automation reports and tells what tests have passed or failed. It is Java-based and has a JS version called SerenityJS for front-end developers, making it one of the best test automation frameworks for UI test automation.

Playwright

This open-source Node.js library allows you to automate the Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit browsers. One of the significant advantages of Playwright is its capability to support multi-page scenarios, auto-wait APIs, network interception, and emulate various device screen sizes, geolocations, and more. Moreover, Playwright allows parallel test execution, improving the overall test time and performance.

Puppeteer

Developed by Google’s Chrome team, Puppeteer is another open-source Node.js library that automates Chromium or Chrome browser actions. Puppeteer is ideal for form submissions, UI testing, keyboard input, and more scenarios. It’s powerful and offers features like generating screenshots and PDFs of pages, crawling a SPA, and capturing a timeline trace to help debug performance issues.

NightwatchJS

NightwatchJS is an end-to-end testing framework based on Node.js. It offers seamless integration with continuous integration systems, making it an ideal solution for automating testing workflows. NightwatchJS simplifies the testing process through its easy-to-write syntax and supports CSS and XPath selectors.

Espresso

Espresso is Google’s open-source Android UI testing framework. Espresso is well-regarded for its stable UI test automation capabilities for Android apps. Its API is small, predictable, and easy to learn, which aids in writing concise and reliable Android UI tests. The Espresso testing framework is synchronized with Android’s lifecycle and operations, reducing the likelihood of test flakiness.

XCUITest

For iOS app developers, Apple’s XCUITest is an excellent choice. It offers a robust and efficient method for UI testing of iOS applications. XCUITest is a part of the XCTest framework, and it can test the UI and interact with the application just like a user would, making it an effective way to replicate and predict user behaviour. Since XCUITest is an Apple-supported tool, it offers deep integration with Xcode, its IDE.

There are various frameworks available for UI testing, but the dilemma is how to select the best one from the available options.

How to select the right UI testing automation framework?

Understand testing requirements:

Even before selecting the framework, the testers should first understand the testing requirements, such as faster test execution, simple reporting, full coverage, etc. Also, testers should decide the most important critical areas that need to be tested on priority, then determine who will own the framework? And how will the framework be implemented and maintained?

Check the budget:

This is the most important step as it involves deciding the budget. It is essential to determine the budget beforehand for selecting an appropriate framework. Based on the budget available, there are three framework options to choose from, i.e., Open source, Commercial, and Customized.

Consider the technology stack:

Another critical point to consider while selecting a framework is that the chosen framework should support all programming languages and operating systems. Also, to conduct UI testing of mobile apps, the framework must support mobile platforms (Android and iOS).

Compare and select the framework:

Conduct deep research and prepare a list of frameworks that best suits the business and project needs. Next, compare the list of frameworks based on their respective pros and cons and then select the best out of all the available options.

Apart from the ways mentioned for selecting the framework, testers can even choose to build their framework as per their requirements.

How to build a UI test automation framework?

• Identify the essential test cases that are to be executed

• Configure code analysis and coverage tools to ensure maximum test coverage

• Prepare test strategy for testing new features into the builds

• Set up a standardized testing environment for UI testing and automate deployments

• Define the entry and exit criteria for each run

• Report and fix critical bugs

• Set up a monitoring and defect management process to detect and report critical issues earlier

It should be noted that the success of UI test automation does not solely depend on the frameworks. The major of it depends on the way the test is executed. Therefore, testers should know the best practices of automated UI testing.

Top 10 UI Testing Automation best practices

• Analyze testing needs and software requirements even before starting UI test automation

• Testers should not rely only on UI test automation; instead, they must execute other types of tests as well

• Testers should follow a proper naming convention for test cases to find specific test cases quickly

• Always use real devices for android UI testing

• Avoid using Sleep Timeout, i.e., sleep () to pause UI tests. Instead, leverage features like Selenium’s implicit and explicit waits

• Leverage headless browser testing tools like Puppeteer (provided by Google) to increase UI testing efficiency

• Do not run all tests across all target browsers; instead, investigate which test cases really need to be executed in different browsers and then leverage grid testing tools

• Always ensure to take screenshots to identify the causes of test failure

• Separate low severity and low priority bugs from main test execution to save time

• Always ensure to set up detailed test reports to make informed decisions

Conclusion

Undoubtedly an application’s UI plays a significant role in creating the first impression on the end-user. If the UI is impressive, the work is half done. Otherwise, the chances of losing a customer are high. Thus, UI testing has become essential for all businesses, irrespective of their size and industry. By leveraging UI testing, businesses can be assured that their app’s UI elements would work seamlessly and deliver a great CX. Therefore, businesses should leverage UI testing from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider to get an impressive app UI and deliver a great UX.

The post UI Testing Automation – An Overview and Best Practices for Businesses first appeared on TestingXperts.

Contents 1. What is Automated UI Testing and Web UI Testing? 2. Benefits of Automated UI Testing 3. Why Should Businesses Leverage Automated UI Testing for Web? 4. Challenges with Web UI Automation Testing 5. How to Overcome Web UI Automation Challenges? 6. What is the Importance of tools in Automated UI Testing for web? 7. Some of the leading Web UI Automation Testing Tools 8. Conclusion

What is Automated UI Testing and Web UI Testing?

Today, businesses are mostly dependent on their website or mobile applications. These modes of business activities revolve around customer interactions, order processing, and transaction processing.

Thus, these channels become an important revenue stream for businesses. In recent years, there has been migration from traditional desktop applications towards other forms of web-based apps and mobile applications.

Today, businesses are in a need for automating web-based tests in their testing processes. This helps to gain an effective user interface (UI) and evidently delivers great user experience (UX) to end-users. This effectiveness can all be achieved by leveraging web automated testing.

UI Testing is the process used to test the graphical user interface(UI) for any defects. Since automation is in demand globally, one of the important methods of UI testing is Web UI automation testing which is used to verify and validate the UI components of various web-based applications. Today’s end-user will appreciate websites, web-based apps or test automation mobile apps, only if they deliver great UX along with an effective UI that enables seamless performance.

Basically, the web UI testing revolves around the graphical user interface (GUI) testing that includes testing of both the functionality and usability of the website or the web app. By specifically using web UI testing, it refers to testing GUI elements like fonts, layouts, buttons, checkboxes, images, colours, etc.

Typically, this web UI testing process concentrates on how the look-and-feel of the website appears to end-users. When the web UI testing is done by using automated web UI testing tools then it is comprehensively named as automated web UI testing.

Benefits of Automated UI Testing

1. Results are accurate:

UI testing ensures that the testing of the user interface is carried out through a well-defined test strategy. This ensures that the entire UI testing activity comes out to be highly productive.

2. Improved coverage:

Through the implementation of UI testing, there is improved coverage as different tests such as functional tests, performance and stress tests, unit tests can be carried out on various devices at a faster rate.

3. Finding errors:

Finding regression errors is one of the main benefits of UI testing, as a lot of time is saved through faster detection of regression errors in the development process.

4. Detecting behaviour differences:

Behaviour differences can be detected between platforms such as Windows/Mac/Java versions, different operating systems and different web browsers.

5. Increased efficiency:

The entire process of UI testing is efficient as the bugs are detected early and testing issues are solved quickly.

Why Should Businesses Leverage Automated UI Testing for Web?

Website UI testing is required to ensure the effective performance of the website and automated website testing is preferred today as this process ensures better test coverage and faster test execution. Automated UI testing for web using automation tools ensures that the web app meets the design and development specifications and ensures a user-friendly website to end-users.

Hence, this sort of automated web application UI testing is performed to find defects either in the functionality or in the design of the website quickly. This web testing process is quite critical to achieving high-quality websites, but the testers face certain challenges while performing automated UI testing for the Web.

Challenges with Web UI Automation Testing

Though automated web UI testing is very important, this process involves certain challenges that should be handled by the testers. Testers should carefully follow the UI testing checklist for the web application and follow the testing process as it includes certain challenges.

1. Multiple error handling:

Error handling is a tedious process with web UI automated testing. Especially when there are large projects with complex scenarios then typically error handling becomes tough.

2. Handling of frequent changes in UI and maintaining UI test scripts:

It is a known fact that web applications’ UI is prone to changes in terms of logic, adding new features, new integrations, or due to new functionalities during the development process Thus, the UI is more prone to changes and the UI testing scripts maintenance becomes a challenge.

3. Image comparison:

Handling of image comparisons is an important aspect of automated UI testing. It is a crucial factor as pixel variations in size, color, shape, and formats should be handled effectively while testing website UI.

4. Testing UI elements:

Web UI automation testers often face a lot of hardships while testing UI elements.

5. Longer test script execution time:

Typically, web UI automation requires more execution time depending on the number of test cases, and often it takes more time for execution.

6. Increasing testing complexity:

As today’s modern applications have complex features such as embedded frames, maps, flowcharts, diagrams and more. These make the UI tests to become more difficult and challenging while testing them.

7. ROI of UI Automation:

It is a fact that application UI keeps changing and simultaneously the test scripts should also be changed. This primarily increases the time spent on Web UI testing and it becomes difficult to calculate the ROI while continuously performing these UI tests.

How to Overcome Web UI Automation Challenges?

1. Choose right UI test automation tool:

It is essential to choose the right framework for web UI automation. Choose a right automation tool that easily integrates into your workflow. Moreover, selecting an effective web UI automation tool helps to record and playback the modules. It also helps the testers and QA teams to generate reports with screenshots to identify error sequences quickly.

2. Prefer to choose codeless automation testing tools:

It is necessary to prefer codeless web UI automation tools as these codeless UI automation tools eases the process of script maintenance, and testers can save both time and cost.

3. Choose Common UI Elements to ease UI testing process:

It is preferred that developers should use common UI elements such that it becomes easy for testers to understand them quickly without any difficulty.

4. Leverage an object repository:

It is preferred to choose a shared repository to reduce test maintenance and reduce the associated costs. In order to ensure effective UI test cases success, it is better to reduce the UI test cases in the initial testing stages and then slowly increase them as testing moves forward.

5. Maintain standard organizational-level best test automation practices:

It is necessary to maintain and follow the best code review processes across the enterprise to ensure best test automation practices are adopted.

Automated UI testing for Web is enabled by using various web UI automation testing tools which deliver numerous benefits while testing web applications.

What is the Importance of tools in Automated UI Testing for web?

1. Eases image comparison process:

For today’s modern applications, image comparison is vital and usually these images on a web application are either with a URL or with other images. Therefore, web UI automation tools can be used to support and ease image comparison.

2. Effective for functional testing:

End-users like web apps that have a simple and easy to use navigation which is possible with good functionality. Automated UI testing tools can be used to get information with respect to the functionality of web apps.

3. Supports cross-browser/platform testing:

These automated web UI tools support testing on multiple browsers, multiple platforms and also on various latest devices. The web apps are tested for their performance across browsers and platforms to know their compatibility.

4. Easily Integrates with bug-tracking tools:

UI test automation tools support integration with bug tracking tools such as Bugzilla, JIRA, Mantis, Quality Center, etc. Evidently, this integration helps to log defects into any of the bug tracking tools and thus it becomes easy to track them.

5. Uniquely used for captcha automation:

It is an effective security measure across websites to enter captcha so as to block robots and ensure human angle in the website visitor. UI testing tools support captcha automation and introducing web UI tools with captcha codes becomes essential for businesses.

6. Helps to quickly generate reports:

These web UI application testing tools can be used to quickly get visual reports along with detailed logs. These reports become handy and can be shared across development and testing teams.

Some of the leading Web UI Automation Testing Tools

1. Selenium:

This is one of the most commonly used open-source test automation tool that is used to automated browsers. Selenium Testing supports multiple programming languages such as Java, C#, Python, etc. to create selenium test scripts. Selenium tool is best suited and used for all web applications across browsers.

2. ACCELQ:

ACCELQ is a leading codeless test automation and agile test management platform which is AI based and is a continuous testing platform. This tool is used for quality lifecycle management, API and UI end-to-end validations. It is an effective functional and test automation platform and is next-gen test management platform for manual and automation intelligent test planning and delivers change management.

3. Tricentis Tosca:

Tricentis Tosca is an effective automation tool that supports all testing activities ranging from test design, test automation to test reports along with analytics. It has special features such as dashboards, analytics, integrations, and effective test executions to support CI and DevOps practices.

This tool also offers a user-friendly UI and a rich feature set for designing, executing, implementing and optimizing API tests. These API tests can be used to test across all browsers, mobile devices, and various platforms.

4. QTP/UFT:

Unified Functional Testing (UFT) is an automation tool that provides functional and regression test automation for software applications and environments. UFT tool automates functional testing for web, mobile, API, RPA and enterprise applications by increasing the test coverage from the UI to API.

5. TestComplete:

TestComplete is one of the important automation testing tool that is used to test desktop, web and mobile applications. It is specifically used to build, test and run functional user interface tests with its much useful record and playback features. This tool supports all scripting languages such as JavaScript, Python, VBScript to name a few.

6. Katalon:

Katalon studio is the most widely used open-source test automation tool that can be used to test both web and mobile applications. This tool can be used together with Appium and Selenium. It primarily helps to quickly generate automated tests cross-platform and seamlessly integrates into CI/CD pipeline. Some of its features include an integrated development environment, a base level object repository, object spy and a typical browser plugin, etc.

Conclusion

Automated UI Testing for Web is a critical testing process which businesses should leverage to know about the functionality of various web app GUI features and how they function. Additionally, this web UI automation testing reduces regression testing efforts largely. But, there are certain challenges with respect to web UI automation testing that should be effectively handled by testers. By handling these challenges, it helps to evolve an effective user friendly website and web app that delivers great UI and UX to end-users.

Hence, automated Web UI testing should be leveraged to deliver an effective web application that delivers great satisfaction to end-users. Leverage next-gen testing services provider to ensure a quality web app to your users with thorough web UI automated testing.

The post Automated UI Testing Challenges and How to Overcome Them first appeared on TestingXperts.

The world is getting more and more connected with each passing day. It is believed that around 30 billion independent things will be connected to the internet by 2020. Now, with this pressure to move at a greater speed, the biggest stumbling block is to identify how to build a continuous approach to testing across multiple channels of engagement.

Contents 1. API Testing 2. What are the benefits of API testing? 3. Challenges of API Testing 4. How to Overcome API Testing Challenges 5. What type of bugs are identified with API testing? 6. What are the tools for API testing? 7. Conclusion

API Testing

The consumerization of IT is changing how applications are being developed. Rather than building a single, monolithic system installed on a server in a back office, modern applications are distributed within mobile devices and web browsers so users can gain access to services from anywhere and at any time. Modern applications are no longer autonomous; they comprise several service components tied together at runtime.

As a result, the end-user experience is not driven by the well-designed user interfaces we all use, but by application programming interfaces (APIs) that expedite interactions between applications, code modules, and back-end systems.

What are the benefits of API testing?

1. Completely Language-Independent:In API testing, there are several data transfer modes, the data can be exchanged using JSON or XML. Since these languages are used for development and are technology-independent, the teams can select any core language while performing the API tests.

2. Helps for Integrated User Experience: With API, embedding the content from any application or website is easier. This way of ease in delivering information is an important benefit as it helps to maintain an integrated user experience.

3. Protects from vulnerabilities and code breakage: API testing effectively helps to eliminate the vulnerabilities with its excellent conditions and inputs. These help in protecting the application from vulnerabilities caused due to the insertion of unknown code or due to code breakage. 

4. Reduces testing time: The methodologies of API testing are excellent to minimize the time consumption. Unlike validation and functional testing, API testing is faster in performing more number of tests. 

5. Increases Developers Productivity: For writing any code, there are very few instances where the developers start from a scratch. While designing API, there is a code base provided to help the time consumption of developers in writing code. This existing code base helps in limiting the differentiation in the code among the developers and also eliminates the time needed for creating new code.

6. Faster results at less cost: In API testing, there is no need for using large codes. By using the lesser code which is less than the GUI automated tests, these tests help to provide easier and faster test results with better test coverage. This results in achieving faster results at reduced testing costs. Also, the faster detection of errors helps in reducing the cost involved for manual testing. 

The API is the intelligence behind this connected world. APIs allow companies to become more agile, and to work together in an integrated manner. However, while testing APIs, testers face several units of work, making it challenging for the testers to test the APIs. Below are the four major challenges experienced while testing APIs along with and suggested solutions.

Challenges of API Testing

1) Use case propagation

Traditional UI testing is limited to the testing functionality of the overall application. A tester construes the output against expected outcomes after exercising an input. However, API testing follows a different approach. Being the central hub of logic and the gateway to data for interfacing applications, use cases are near-infinite in API testing. Consequently, the number of required tests rapidly exceeds the competences of the technical staff responsible for test case design.

2) Access to connected systems

APIs pull data from multiple APIs and back-end systems, in which the resulting architecture looks like the roots of a tree extending wide and deep. Thus, it’s impossible to have access to every environment on this tree. The emulation of inaccessible resources is the key to avoiding testing bottlenecks. However, the old way of building custom mocks is proving too challenging. Besides, they cannot emulate race conditions for comprehensive performance and load testing.

3) Synchronous and asynchronous methods

Modern applications are intricate, and one API can link several microservices and other APIs. Accordingly, a single call on an API can prompt ‘n’ number of serial and parallel activities. The intricacies of an API can thus grow exponentially as it is combined with other API calls. And this complexity multiplies as testers feature in the calling order of APIs in test case design. Consequently, testing APIs must be managed in both separate and nuclear units of work.

4) API versioning

Versioning is a primary cause of rising complexity in API testing. Most systems have a degree of depreciation, which should be managed by an API with the help of versioning. The API must identify missing values and allocate some default to allow the old version to work. Moreover, it can be the case that some versions are called by some versions but not others.

How to Overcome API Testing Challenges

To overcome the above-listed challenges, a modern approach should be adopted that enables you to automate API tests and integrate them into a continuous delivery cycle.

Phase I: Integration level Testing

The integration test phase will focus on service interfaces and will make sure interface behavior and information sharing are working as specified.

Phase II: Process/Orchestration Testing

This phase covers:

• Business logic
• Sequencing
• Exception handling
• Process decomposition (including service and process reuse)

Phase III: Security and Governance Testing

In this phase, SOA / API is combined with Government and Regulatory compliance, which is incorporated into the entire project life cycle. This phase comprises Quality of Service policies on Performance, Security, and Transactions.

• Regulatory policies
• Business policies
• Audit policies
• Infrastructure policies

Phase IV: System Level Testing

This test phase will cover whether the technical solution met the defined business acceptance criteria.

What type of bugs are identified with API testing?

Identifies bugs related to Authentication: With API testing, it is easier to trigger the bugs raised because of entering unacceptable characters in the apps authentication field. Though the bugs are not considered as severe for the application, it can sometimes lead to app destruction. 

Resolves the issue of Browser Adaptability: For any application, browser adaptability is one of the important needs. If the application fails to respond to any browser, then it can lead to dissatisfaction among the users and affect the brand reputation. Hence, by adopting the methods of API testing, it becomes simpler to identify and resolve the issues related to the app’s ability across browsers.

Identifies configuration errors on all devices: It is necessary for the apps to be compatible across the devices. If the app is unable to meet any device resolution, then this can raise complications for the app’s future and user’s interest. With API testing, it becomes easier to find out whether the app is compatible across devices and browsers to target the audience. 

Finds the bugs related to accessibility: Users always prefer apps that are user-friendly and provide a simplified understanding of the app usage. Hence, it is essential to know the importance of adding the menu, help, and search sections on the homepage. An easily accessible app is always a top choice for users.

What are the tools for API testing?

Open-Source API Testing Tools:

• JMeter
• Rest-Assured
• Karate DSL
• Citrus Framework
• Parasoft SOAtest
• Rest Assured  
• Tricentis

Commercial API Testing Tools:

• Katalon Studio
• SoapUI
• Postman
• Apigee

Conclusion

TestingXperts is proficient in a wide range of API protocols such as XML, SOAP, JSON, REST, Gdata, YAML, ATOM, RSS, and RDF, etc. Our end to end applications validation experience at various layers of the application helps in executing a successful API. Our expertise in leading industry tools for API testing for functional, load and security testing allows us to automate API test cases.

The post Top 4 Challenges of API Testing and How to Overcome Them first appeared on TestingXperts.