April 2016 Summaries

Agile development is a method that allows for faster release cycles, adapting to changing priorities, increasing productivity, and improving product quality. This approach enables simultaneous work between developers and testers, reducing the need for manual testing by automating tests as soon as code changes are made. Mobile app testing faces unique challenges, including device fragmentation, hardware limitations, and user expectations. To overcome these obstacles, mobile test automation plays a crucial role in continuous integration and delivery, allowing for faster release cycles, reduced testing time, and improved product quality. The initial investment required to implement mobile test automation is worth considering, as it can lead to significant returns on investment and enable scaling of testing efforts. By leveraging tools like Appium, developers can write versatile test scripts that work across multiple platforms and technologies, streamlining the testing process and improving overall efficiency.

Testing mobile applications is significantly harder than testing web applications due to various factors such as feature parity, platform complexities, deployment challenges, and tool support. When developing a feature for a web application, the team only needs to account for one user world, whereas mobile apps require consideration of multiple device platforms' capabilities and user communities' expectations. Additionally, deploying mobile applications can be time-consuming due to the need to manually install apps on live, local devices, while integration tests against backend services are similar in both cases. However, web automation has a more mature industry with better tools and support from the user community, making it easier for testers to write automated tests. Overall, testing mobile applications requires a deeper understanding of platform complexities, test strategies, and tooling, which can be challenging but also presents opportunities for growth and innovation in the field.

Testing in production (TiP) is a practice that involves testing applications in their actual production environment, rather than in a controlled testing environment. This approach can provide real-world feedback and help teams identify and fix issues more efficiently, without risking the reputation of the team or organization. TiP is necessary for teams that adopt continuous delivery (CI/CD), which breaks down releases into small, uneventful streams of updates to the app. It's also closely tied to behavior-driven development (BDD) and test-driven development (TDD), which are integral to DevOps. Docker containers can help build redundancy and isolate failures, making it easier to test in production. Implementing techniques like Netflix's Chaos Monkey can help ensure system resilience, while starting with a beta list of testers can provide a safe space for testing critical components. With the right mindset and tools, teams can start testing in production today and reap its benefits.

Appium is a free and open-source test automation framework for mobile testing that can use any language supported by Selenium WebDriver. It allows users to write tests against iOS and Android platforms using the same API, enabling code reuse between test suites. The Appium server communicates with devices and test scripts over a standardized JSON protocol, making it easy to run on separate machines. With Appium, users can automate native, web, and hybrid mobile apps, and test on real devices, simulators, or emulators. The framework is designed for automated testing, taking advantage of developer skills, and supports various languages and platforms, including Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android.

Appium is a free, open-source test automation framework for mobile testing that allows developers to write tests using any language supported by Selenium WebDriver. It provides a standardized JSON over HTTP protocol and can automate native, web, and hybrid mobile apps on real devices, simulators, or emulators. The Appium server communicates with client libraries tailored to each language, enabling code reuse between test suites. Testing in the Appium framework is designed for mobile testing only and takes advantage of developer skills, allowing for automated testing of GUI-related widgets and controls. It integrates with continuous integration servers and supports various platforms such as iOS and Android, while following philosophical tenets of openness, flexibility, and avoiding unnecessary recompilation or modification of apps.

In order to stabilize automated UI tests without halting development on new features, developers can build a test skeleton into their current framework. This approach avoids creating a manual test suite and instead focuses on defining test plans, unit testing, and UI testing while still manually running through tests during the sprint. Automated UI tests are temporarily disabled with a comment describing the goal of the test, allowing teams to identify which tests need to be executed manually. The test skeletons can be easily identified and refined as needed, and once stabilization is achieved, the automated tests can be enabled and converted from manual tests, minimizing overhead and conversion costs.

Sauce Connect Launcher (SCL) is a Firefox add-on that allows users to run a Sauce Connect tunnel directly from Firefox without having to download or install it manually. With SCL, users can easily launch a test by going to Tools > Web Developer > Launch SC and start their tunnel, which can be stopped using the same option. This tool enables cross-browser testing on localhost, making it easier for developers to run manual tests. The add-on requires only a Sauce username and access key to be inputted to establish the tunnel.

Protractor is an end-to-end testing framework for AngularJS applications, requiring a solid foundation in JavaScript, NodeJS, and AngularJS to build effective tests. To get started with Protractor, one needs to master core JavaScript functions, events, error handling, and debugging before diving into the testing journey. Online courses such as CodeSchool's Real-Time Web with Node.js and tutorials like AngularJS by Mozilla can provide a comprehensive learning path. Protractor supports AngularJS directive strategies, allowing for efficient testing without much effort. Understanding how Protractor works, including its workflow, spec files, configuration files, and best practices such as avoiding CSS selectors and mocking services, is essential for effective end-to-end testing. With a core JavaScript foundation and the right resources, developers can build solid test foundations and optimize software development quality.