The Web App Testing Guidebook
The Web App Testing Guidebook
UI Testing of Real World Websites Using WebdriverIO
About the Book
Check out the Web App Testing with WebdriverIO course, which is a video companion to this book.
Over the past decade, website complexity has grown substantially, requiring much more effort when it comes to testing. While test automation is certainly not a recent technique, it has grown in popularity lately due to the increased complexity of the sites we build.
In fact, many organizations have full teams dedicated just to testing their site. Quality Assurance is an important role for any company that wants to take its technology seriously.
However, having humans manually run through test scripts is time-consuming.
By automating tests, we shift the workload from manual labor to speedy CPUs. Without humans and their need to sleep and eat, we can test our sites on-demand, around the clock.
Wouldn't it be ideal to have a test suite so effective that your QA team focused solely on keeping it up-to-date?
Unfortunately, that's not the reality.
I've seen, heard, and have been part of many teams that set out after this ideal, only to realize months later that all the effort has provided them little benefit. Yes, they have test automation in place, but it's constantly breaking and causing endless headaches. It seems they either have tests that run well but don't validate much, or have tests that check for everything but are always reporting false errors.
In 2017 I spent the year recording screencasts covering WebdriverIO, a test automation framework that we'll be learning in this book. While I covered the details of the framework quite well (or so I was told), I was left with nagging questions of "is knowing the tool valuable enough?"
Is knowing how to mix colors and hold a paintbrush enough to be able to paint beautiful art?
Does knowing what the 'addValue' command does in WebdriverIO teach you enough to write tests that are effective?
So I'm rebuilding this content. I want to focus on that second part this time around. Yes, it's important to cover the details of commands and code. More importantly though, you need to see how you can combine all that technology to create a test suite that provides actual value.
In this book, I cover not only what WebdriverIO can do, but also how you'll be using it day-to-day. I've built the examples around real-world scenarios that demonstrate how you would actually set things up. It's not just "what", but also "how to get there".
It takes a little more work on my part, and extra effort on your's to get started, but the payoff is there, I promise.
About the Author
About the Contributors
Technical Editor
https://mpgilbert.com/
Table of Contents
-
1.1 Introduction
- 1.1.1 Why Read This Book?
- 1.1.2 Why Use WebdriverIO?
- 1.1.3 Technical Details
-
1.2 Installation and Configuration
- 1.2.1 Software Requirements
- 1.2.2 Browsers and “Driving” Them
- 1.2.3 Installing WebdriverIO and Basic Usage
- 1.2.4 Upgrading to the WebdriverIO Test Runner
- 1.2.5 Reviewing the Standard WebdriverIO Configuration File
- 1.2.6 Running the Example Test Runner Test
-
2.0 A ‘Real World’ App
- 2.0.1 Why ‘Real World’?
- 2.0.2 Use the Shared Demo App
- 2.0.3 Run Your Own Server Locally
- 2.0.4 Using a Docker Image (Recommended)
- 2.0.5 Self-install and Run
- 2.0.6 A Final Reminder
-
2.1 Site Loading and Navigation
- 2.1.1 Avoiding Troubles
- 2.1.2 Let’s Start
- 2.1.3 Writing our First Real Test
- 2.1.4 Elements and Actions
- 2.1.5 Checking URLs
- 2.1.6 Adding Assertions
- 2.1.7 Expanding Assertions
- 2.1.8 The WebdriverIO Expect Library
- 2.1.9 Exceeding Expectations
- 2.1.10 Chapter Challenge
-
2.2 Selectors of Every Shape and Size
- 2.2.1 Selectors Overview
- 2.2.2 CSS Selectors
- 2.2.3 XPath
- 2.2.4 Chaining Selectors
- 2.2.5 Custom Data Attributes for Testing
- 2.2.6 Avoiding Poorly Built Selectors
- 2.2.7 Chapter Challenge
-
2.3 Testing the Login Page
- 2.3.1 Is This Thing Working?
- 2.3.2 Slow It Down
- 2.3.3 Network Throttling
- 2.3.4 Waiting With Waits
- 2.3.5 Waiting With Inverse Waits
- 2.3.6 Chapter Challenge
-
2.4 Custom Functions, Page Objects, and Actions
- 2.4.1 You’ve Got Me Hooked
- 2.4.2 Getting the Error Text
- 2.4.3 Only One More Thing I Don’t Want to Skip
- 2.4.4 Custom Test Functions
- 2.4.5 Basics of Page Objects
- 2.4.6 Naming Patterns
- 2.4.7 Page Actions
- 2.4.8 Improving Our Login Detection
- 2.4.9: Separating Files
- 2.4.10 Chapter Challenge
-
2.5 Sharing Common Page Object Functionality
- 2.5.1 Testing the Post Editor
- 2.5.2 Has the Page Loaded Properly?
- 2.5.3 Storing Common Credentials as Test Fixtures
- 2.5.4 Using and Updating the Auth Login Function
- 2.5.5 Abstracting the Page Load
- 2.5.6 Common Page Objects
- 2.5.7 Time to ‘extend’ Our Generic Page
- 2.5.8 The ‘super’ Keyword
- 2.5.9 Implementing Our Generic Page Object
- 2.5.10 Using Our Page Object’s Path in Tests
- 2.5.11 Taking Advantage of NodeJS’s URL Utility
- 2.5.12 Finishing the URL Implementation
- 2.5.13 Chapter Challenge
-
2.6 Testing Complex Inputs
- 2.6.1 Testing the Publish Action
- 2.6.2 Key Commands
- 2.6.3 Submitting and Validating the Result
- 2.6.4 Form Submission Functions
- 2.6.5 ChanceJS to Create Data
- 2.6.6 Checking Page Data
- 2.6.7 Testing Multiple Tags
- 2.6.8 Checking Alerts When Leaving With Unsaved Changes
- 2.6.9 A Not-So-Random Chance
- 2.6.10 Global Chance via WebdriverIO Configuration Hooks
- 2.6.11 Chapter Challenge
-
2.7 Managing User Sessions
- 2.7.1 Thinking Through a New Type of Test
- 2.7.2 Checking Those Feeds
- 2.7.3 Session Management
- 2.7.4 Executing Arbitrary Scripts in the Browser
- 2.7.5 Speeding up the login via APIs
- 2.7.6 Global Custom Commands
- 2.7.7 Chapter Challenge
-
2.8 Creating Page Components
- 2.8.1 Checking the Active Tab
- 2.8.2 Switching Tabs
- 2.8.3 Dynamic Content Testing
- 2.8.4 Waiting to Load
- 2.8.5 Custom Page Components
- 2.8.6 The Feed Page Component
- 2.8.7 Testing Feeds
- 2.8.8 Testing Feed Content
- 2.8.9 Validating Multiple Properties Easier
- 2.8.10 Chapter Challenge
-
2.9 Generating Data for Testing via APIs
- 2.9.1 The ‘Tag’ Page
- 2.9.2 Creating a New Article/Tag via the API
- 2.9.3 Writing Our Tag Page Test
- 2.9.4 Cleaning Up Our Mess
- 2.9.5 Exercises
-
3.0 Chapter Challenge Code Solutions
- Chapter 2.1: Assertions
- Chapter 2.2: Selectors
- Chapter 2.3: Waiting Another Way
- Chapter 2.4: Registration Tests
- Chapter 2.5: More Sharing
- Chapter 2.6: Validating ‘Edit Article’ Functionality
- Chapter 2.7: Move ‘loginViaApi’ Command to the Auth Page Object
- Chapter 2.8: Validating the “Popular Tags” Block
- Chapter 2.9: Public User Profile Page Tests
- 3.1 Final Thoughts
Causes Supported
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Changing how we talk about mental health in the tech community.
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