Website automation testing using Selenium
Website automation testing is high on demand, and developers prefer the Selenium testing framework for it. Automation testing saves a lot of human time and performs almost all kinds of feature testing. The testing makes your website application more reliable. But, your website should have testable software architecture and design before integrating automation scripts. The effort is worth it at last.
We do not have time to test all the features and the user interfaces manually. And therefore, we should verify the main features and then move on. That advice is shared by all web application owners whenever an upgrade is ready to upload.
You don’t want to invest extra money in testing, but you want to cover all test cases during each upgrade. So what is the answer?
Software automation testing. Automation testing isn’t a new trend. Professionals were using different tools and methods in the past. But, you have access to mature tools now.
Selenium is one of the best options among other automation testing tools, and it’s free. You can get tons of supports out of it. And once you have written test scenarios, you can run these test cases multiple times without human intervention.
Higher productivity and efficiency in business processes and website reliability are two main benefits after integration software automation testing.
If you are planning to integrate website automation testing, then your website should cover the following criteria – especially if you are using the Selenium web driver;
- HTML formatting according to DOM standards.
- Testable software architecture design
- The proper way to set up fixtures or website state.
You should hire a professional software automation engineer, and he will audit the existing website source code to calculate the total mess. You could use our automation consulting service, and my team and I will review the website features and send you the detailed report.
The team, however, could start to integrate selenium testing if they have all these things in place.
HTML formatting – DOM standards
Any user interface testing tool expects proper Html formatting in all of the website pages. And if HTML formatting is wrong or way different than the standards, then chances of failure are high, or your team may invest extra time integrating the simple test cases.
Selenium finds Html elements using the Id or Name attribute, and therefore these values should be easy to recall. Sometimes, the user interface designer uses a graphical tool to generate Html content, and it creates a random string for these attributes.
Also, dynamically Html page generation utilities should not generate dynamic attributes’ value on each run. If security concerns you, then developers can write the meta-programs for creating dynamic Html tag attributes. And these meta-programs can be deployed into live or production environments, and static Html tag attributes into the staging and UAT and development environments.
Testable software architecture design
The wrong software architecture and design are reasons for all software failures. Many software books, blogs, and experts have advised creating testable software architecture design, and still, developers are not following it.
Testable source code is free of dependency problems.
Software automation testing includes integration and system testing. And testable code allows developers to write test cases without worry about user interface design and actions.
Support for setting up fixture or website state
Fixtures are consistent application state – data information and object creations. The application requires different data and states for performing intermediate testing.
For example;
Testing the login feature requires an application to have registered users and permissions. If automated tools couldn’t create registered users, then we couldn’t verify the login feature.
You may suggest if login is dependent on registration, and therefore we should test registration before login. This solution includes the dependency of two test cases. And this is not good practice.
If these two are independent units, then we can test them in any order.
Website application automation testing isn’t easy, and it requires good software architecture and coding standards.
My team and I have been involved in website automation testing and figured that software automation testing takes good programming skills and extra care in source code designing. The project gives a good experience of software development phases; designing, coding, managing the environments, and many more.
You could hire our software automation service and find total peace of website upgrades. Our experience in software development and testing won’t let you down.