Automation Testing Tutorial
Manual testing is no longer sufficient since businesses want software to be produced more rapidly and with greater quality to compete. The term “automated testing” has gained currency in the IT industry today. This automated testing tutorial will teach you how to meet your company’s goals.
Introduction to Automation Testing
Automation testing was introduced when manually testing an application with multiple input fields became difficult. When testers were tired, their attention began to waver, allowing faults to go unnoticed.
To reduce human input and boost quality, automated testing entails testing software products using specialized testing tools and frameworks.
Why Automation Testing?
When a company produces a product, it will inevitably contain faults. So, before launching the product, the corporation needs to catch the defects in it to create a flawless customer experience.
It is the role of the testing team to execute various types of testing, from functional to non-functional, to verify the effectiveness, performance, and improved user experience of the overall product.
Even if testing engineers do manual and automation testing, doing automation testing relieves a lot of manual work, offers additional accurate results, and can save a lot of time, which ultimately results in the faster delivery of the applications.
Life Cycle of Automation Testing
To supply the greatest quality software applications, a firm should follow the step-by-step automation testing life cycle to gain a competitive advantage in the market.
Check out the six stages of automation testing in the image below:
The Scope of Automation Testing
Once handling all the test cases, one must verify the suitability of automation. The following factors should be taken into account when determining the scope of testing automation:
- What are the modules that can be replaced using automation?
- What are the total expected expenditures and the team structure?
- What are the tests to be streamlined, and what is the method to be obtained?
The Right Automation Tool
Automation Testing is not entirely feasible without the appropriate testing tool.
Choosing the right tool is a crucial stage in the testing life cycle, where everyone has to consider various points:
- Good understanding of the tool among the resource base on-board
- Total expenditure and versatility
- Technology solutions and programming languages used to create the project
- Deciding on a tool that has an assistance team to take care of any concerns and questions.
Automation Test Plan, Design, and Strategy
Its work is to create a plan, build the architecture, and formulate a strategy to accomplish the objective of test automation.
Test Plan: Development of test standards and processes, as well as hardware, software, and test data needs.
Test Design: Create the test layout to evaluate the flow of the successive test procedures.
Test Strategy: Find the most appropriate test automation framework.
Configuring the Test Environment
You must configure a remote machine or a machine where the test cases can be executed. It should offer a comprehensive test coverage range for multiple test scenarios, and different browsers, and support desktop and mobile apps.
Automation Test Script Execution
In this step, you will run the test scripts to see if they are working properly. This step includes all functional aspects as well as platform compatibility. You also have to create a bug report if the test case fails.
Analysis and Creation of Test Results and Reports
That will be the last stage of the testing life cycle. You will examine the test reports to assess whether they require extra testing. The test results are then generated to verify that the test scripts can detect errors in the application. Then, the test reports are distributed to the members/clients that are participating in the project.
Types of Automation Testing
When you are given a product, your understanding of automation types can enable you to pick which sort of test suites you can use for automating.
Automation testing is classified into three types, as shown below:
Automation Testing Based on Testing Types
Now, in the following section, you can learn about the various types of Automation Testing.
Functional Testing
Functional testing analyzes the product’s functionality and checks each function/feature of the program. It is based on the client’s requirements. Functional testing validates the activities of the developed software.
Non-functional Evaluation
Non-functional testing should be about how a product performs and validates the non-functional elements, such as performance, reliability, usability, etc., of the product. It is based on what customers expect.
Automation Testing Based on Testing Phases
Unit Testing
Unit testing provides a detailed picture of how the code is performing. For the entire product or software to operate correctly, every one of the code’s various components must work. It has a quicker execution time as you are testing only sections of code at a time.
API Testing
API is an abbreviation for Application Programming Interface. It serves as a bridge between the user interface and the database. The program is designed to make API calls to obtain the output, and testers record the system/application replies to ensure operation.
UI Testing
UI testing helps in examining the validity of visual components on the system’s interface, such as fields, buttons, labels, links, text fields, and pictures. Its primary goal is to produce a pleasant user interface (UI) and experience.
Automation Testing Based on Test Types
The following are some of the most popular automation tests:
Smoke Testing
Smoke testing is sometimes known as build verification testing (BVT). It is carried out in the early phases of application testing. When you add a new feature or functionality to an existing build, smoke testing is performed as a checkpoint before proceeding to the next level of testing.
Integration Testing
Integration testing is sometimes referred to as I&T testing, string testing, and, in rare cases, thread testing. Its purpose is to ensure that all of the application’s components communicate properly.
Regression Testing
Regression testing is used to ensure that the produced and tested software continues to function correctly when modifications are made. The modifications might be bug patches, configuration changes, or program enhancements.
Security Testing
As a tester, you don’t want unauthorized access to cause data breaches, revenue loss, or a reputational hit. To avert such occurrences and prevent hostile infiltration, security testing is done, which unravels the underlying dangerous threads, vulnerabilities, threats, malware, and other hazards in the software program.
Performance Testing
Even if your product is under heavy load, it must operate without lag. As a result, you must test your product before releasing it to users to ensure its responsiveness, speed, stability, dependability, and resilience under a certain workload.
Acceptance Testing
Acceptance testing is the last phase of testing before introducing the product into the market. It is done to ensure that all user needs, business requirements, and client demands are met, as well as to determine whether or not the product is ready for delivery.
Testing Frameworks
Testing frameworks offer a set of rules for professionals that include coding standards, repository administration, and test data handling to achieve benefits such as easier code reuse, decreased time spent managing scripts, and high portability.
The following are some of the most often-used testing frameworks:
Linear Framework
This is the most basic structure of all. You must create basic code to perform the test cases in this framework, with no modularity or sequential stages. It functions as a recording and playback model.
Keyword-driven Framework
It is a scripting approach in which you correlate keywords with specific activities such as browser opening and shutting, mouse-click events, and so forth. You may use these keywords later in your test scripts to conduct a specific step. You will also have a file where you will keep track of all the keywords and the activities they do.
Data-driven Framework
In a data-driven framework, all the testing data inputs have been retained in the table or extension files, including .xls, .xml, .csv, etc. The values from the table will be read when the test scripts are executed.
Page Object Modeling Framework
You will establish an object repository for the web UI elements in the POM framework. It enables you to call these functions later without rewriting the code. As a result, there is less verbosity, more code reuse, and less time spent writing test scripts.
Modular Framework
The modular structure enables you to separate test scripts into discrete, self-contained components. This will also assist you in creating the necessary test cases and testing the scripts independently.
Automation Testing Tools
An automation tool should be chosen depending on the sort of testing and framework you want to use. There are a lot of tools accessible on the market for you to pick from as per your needs. Here are the most popular automation testing tools.
Selenium
It is a web application and web browser testing tool. It includes many strong tools for testing web applications. It also supports different systems and browsers due to the Selenium IDE.
JMeter
It is a tool for doing performance testing.
QuickTest Professional (QTP)
Testers use QTP for automated regression testing to find discrepancies between expected and actual results as well as output mistakes or faults.
NUnit and JUnit
Professionals use these tools to do unit testing.
TestNG
TestNG is more of a framework than a tool, and it supports Selenium, REST Assured, Appium, and other frameworks. Testers can generate HTML reports for the tests, indicating whether they passed, failed, or were skilled. They can re-run the failed test cases later.
Appium
It is a tool for testing mobile applications and native apps.
The Advantages of Automation Testing
Automation testing, like any other sort of testing, has advantages and disadvantages. You will learn about the top ten benefits of automation testing in this article.
- It is dependable since it is carried out using effective testing instruments.
- 70% quicker than manual testing, saving testers and the company a significant amount of time.
- Automation testing eliminates the need for human interaction while running test scripts.
- It enables the re-use and re-running of test cases.
- It boosts the speed and efficiency of the software testing process.
- Automation testing encompasses all application functions.
- It also enables faster product distribution to the market.
- Automation testing’s faster feedback mechanisms result in an easier information flow between developers and testers, allowing errors to be detected and fixed early.
- It improves accuracy since it eliminates the potential for human mistakes.
- It has the power to execute enormous volumes of test cases at a time.
Conclusion
We hope this automation testing tutorial gives you a better understanding of testing software using trending tools and technologies. Reshape your career by enrolling in our automation testing training in Chennai.
