I am getting close doing something actually useful with Meteor. After being in war with NodeJS and Cucumber, I am finally at the stage of going beyond the boundaries of writing some Gherkinish - and as I am spoiled with the Ruby frameworks that provide automated testing facilities, such as Capybara, I wanted to ask which solution would fit in with Meteor, Flow Router, Blaze, Cucumber and CoffeeScript do such automation, simulating and uniform a real user's interaction with an meteor application.
Your feedback is truly appreciated!
Velocity allows automated testing with Cucumber.
Related
Some years ago I´ve tried to work with BDD and some tools of Acceptance tests, like Selenium/Web-driver, Fitnesse and JBehave.
I´d like to back to work with that in my current project, so I would like to know what the community is using of tools to perform that!
My project is based on Java.
Acceptance tests tools ?
BDD tools?
Should I consider a scripting language ?
The most successful teams are using conversations and not worrying too much about the tools!
Having said that, here are a few Java BDD tools that are in use in the community:
JBehave* (still)
Cucumber for the JVM (I don't think it's been as maven-ized as JBehave)
Fitnesse (though I recommend putting "Slim" behind it instead of "Fit")
Custom DSLs (it's not that hard).
Selenium is still the automation tool of choice for Java and the web.
*I helped write JBehave. One reason we got into it in the first place was because the acceptance tests we saw using scripts were such an astonishing mess. Meh. Also, you can't collaborate with the business or have conversations about scripts. I strongly recommend having conversations first**, then worrying about the tools!
** If you're working on your own, buy a rubber duck.
I strongly recommend spockframework + Geb. You need groovy support though. We have lot of tests running as part of CI every night. The reports are in junit format (being enhanced to be used by business users soon) and hence can be published to servers like Hudson or Sonar.
I'm a rails developer, and I want to do some capybara+(rspec or cucumber) style of integration testing with cakephp 2.0. I was using PHPUnit (the default test framework for cake 2.0) but I don't know how to integrate it with Selenium and Cake at the same time to get the full stack effect that you have on rails
So, for the experience php devs that have used cake 2.0... how do you guys do a proper integration testing?
I'm not surprised there's been no answer on this - the community of testers within CakePHP seems to be extremely small. I've worked on large projects with huge numbers of functional and unit tests (currently a suite of around 1500 tests), but to do that I needed to extend the CakePHP test suite functionality (you can take a look at my now slightly outdated TDD plugin).
When we started we didn't know a whole lot about integration testing, and setting up a decent unit testing environment was enough of a challenge. We now use Rails :)
Basically, this is not a well-worn path. To get something working will require an extension to the framework - it will also require a new test case class, which extends PHPUnit_Extensions_Selenium2TestCase, and integrates any necessary functionality from CakeTestCase and ControllerTestCase.
I hope you get somewhere! If you do, it would be great if you could share the code with the rest of the community.
We are in search of an automated testing tool for our project. As we are in testing department we prefer a tool which would have less programming in it. Please suggest some tools for us .Till now we are testing our application manually.
Our project is being developed in Java.
Is there any freeware tool that I could use or is it better to go for a paid tool?
Thanks in Advance.
Less programming? You'll need something like JUnit to write unit tests if you want to do serious regression testing, but unit tests require you to write some code
Here's a big list of open-source testing tools, some of them may offer what you want: http://java-source.net/open-source/testing-tools/junit
For example, T2 claims to be a random testing tool. As one, it is fully automatic, but one must keep in mind that the code coverage of random testing is in general very limited. It should be used as a complement to other testing methods. T2 checks for internal errors, run time exceptions, method specifications, and class invariant.
Not sure if you mean a CI tool or not, but we use Hudson at Zappos and it works pretty well.
http://hudson-ci.org/
..and there's also CruiseControl: http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/
If you're not talking about CI, maybe you mean QA testing - in which case you should take a look at something like Selenium (for web apps):
http://seleniumhq.org/
If you're doing GUI testing? I'm not really familiar with that area, but I've heard about WinRunner and Rational:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_WinRunner
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/offerings/quality/
..though neither are really free tools. Something like AutoIT might help you move widgets around, but it lacks the reporting parts:
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/index.shtml
There could be two answer to you question:
Besides Selenium, though it has ample of advantages, I am reading about another tool which uses same API which Selenium use. The only changes in API I have seen so far is it reduces the complexity of functions thus making it more easier and simpler for user who is learning.
The tool is called 'Helium' and it has 50% (and more) less complex functions and code as Selenium has.
The only problem with this tool is it is paid tool for learning purpose and for implementing not-so-big scale project you can use it. But yeah after some time its gonna cost you.
I have implemented some code on Helium. Please let me know , if you face any issue initially or you are thinking to implement it.
Other being, you can use Selenium Builder(http://khyatisehgal.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/selenium-builder-exporting-and-execution/) which is an advanced form of Selenium IDE. It imports your command in different languages and does work more effectively and efficiently as Selenium IDE does(http://khyatisehgal.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/selenium-builder/) . So you can import scripts in Eclipse IDE and just execute them as is.
Please let me know , if you have any doubt in any of the tool.
We're in the initial stages of a large project, and have decided that some form of automated UI testing is likely going to be useful for us, but have not yet sorted out exactly how this is going to work...
The primary goal is to automate a basic install and run-through of the app, so if a developer causes a major breakage (eg: app won't install, network won't connect, window won't display, etc) the testers don't have to waste their time (and get annoyed by) installing and configuring a broken build
A secondary goal is to help testers when dealing with repetitive tasks.
My question is: Who should create these kinds of tests? The implicit assumption in our team has been that the testers will do it, but everything I've read on the net always seems to imply that the developers will create them, as a kind of 'extended unit test'.
Some thoughts:
The developers seem to be in a much better position to do this, given that they know control ID's, classes, etc, and have a much better picture of how the app is working
The testers have the advantage of NOT knowing how the app is working, and hence can produce tests which may be much more useful
I've written some initial scripts using IronRuby and White. This has worked really well, and is powerful enough to do literally anything, but then you need to be able to write code to write the UI tests
All of the automated UI test tools we've tried (TestComplete, etc) seem to be incredibly complex and fragile, and while the testers can use them, it takes them about 100 times longer and they're constantly running into "accidental complexity" caused by the UI test tools.
Our testers can't code, and while they're plenty smart, all I got were funny looks when I suggested that testers could potentially write simple ruby scripts (even though said scripts are about 100x easier to read and write than the mangled mess of buttons and datagrids that seems to be the standard for automated UI test tools).
I'd really appreciate any feedback from others who have tried UI automation in a team of both developers and testers. Who did what, and did it work well? Thanks in advance!
Edit: The application in question is a C# WPF "rich client" application which connects to a server using WCF
Ideally it should really be QA who end up writing the tests. The problem with using a programmatic solution is the learning curve involved in getting the QA people up to speed with using the tool. Developers can certainly help with this learning curve and help the process by mentoring, but it still takes time and is a drag on development.
The alternative is to use a simple GUI tool which backs a language (and data scripts) and enables QA to build scripts visually, delving into the finer details of the language only when really necessary - development can also get involved here also.
The most successful attempts I've seen have definitely been with the latter, but setting this up is the hard part. Selenium has worked well for simple web applications and simple threads through the application. JMeter also (for scripted web conversations for web services) has worked well... Another option which is that of in house built test harness - a simple tool over the top of a scripting language (Groovy, Python, Ruby) that allows QA to put test data into the application either via a GUI or via data files. The data files can be simple properties files, or in more complex cases structured (something like YAML or even Excel) data files. That way they can build the basic smoke tests to start, and later expand that into various scenario driven tests.
Finally... I think rich client apps are way more difficult to test in this way, but it depends on the nature of the language and the tools available to you...
In my experience, testers who can code will switch jobs for a pay raise as developers.
I agree with you on the automated UI testing tools. Every place I've worked that was rich enough to afford WinRunner or LoadRunner couldn't afford the staff to actually use it. The prices may have changed, but back then, these were in the high 5-digit to low 6-digit price tags (think of the price of a starter home). The products were hard to use, and were usually kept uninstalled in a locked cabinet because everyone was afraid of getting in trouble for breaking them.
I worked over 7 years as an application developer before I finally switched to testing and test automation. Testing is much more challenging than coding, and any automation developer who wants to succeed should master testing skills.
Some time ago I put my thoughts on skill matrices in a couple of blog posts.
If interested to discuss:
http://automation-beyond.com/2009/05/28/qa-automation-skill-matrices/
Thanks.
I think having the developers write the tests will be of the most use. That way, you can get "breakage checking" throughout your dev cycle, not just at the end. If you do nightly automated builds, you can catch and fix bugs when they're small, before they grow into huge, mean, man-eating bugs.
What about the testers proposing the tests, and the developers actually writing it ?
I believe at first it largely depends on the tools you use.
Our company currently uses Selenium (We're a Java shop).
The Selenium IDE (which records actions in Firefox) works OK, but developers need to manually correct mistakes it makes against our webapps, so it's not really appropriate for QA to write tests with.
One thing I tried in the past (with some success), was to write library functions as wrappers for Selenium functions. They read as plain english:
selenium.clickButton("Button Text")
...but behind the scenes check for proper layout and tags on the button, has an id etc.
Unfortunately this required a lot of set up to allow easy writing of tests.
I recently became aware of a tool called Twist (from Thoughtworks, built on the Eclipse engine), which is a wrapper for Selenium, allowing plain English style tests to be written. I am hoping to be able to supply this to the testers, who can write simple assertions in plain English!
It automatically creates stubs for new assertions too, so the testers could write the tests, and pass them to developers if they need new code.
I've found the most reasonable option is to have enough specs such that the QA folks can stub out the test, basically figure out what they want to test at each 'screen' or on each component, and stub those out. The stubs should be named such that they're very descriptive as to what they're testing. This also offers a way to crystalize functional requirements. In fact, doing the requirements in this fashion are particularly easy, and help non-technical people really work through the muddy waters of their own though process.
The stubs can be filled in via a combination of QA/dev people. This allows you to CHEAPLY train QA people as to how to write tests, and they typically slurp it up as it furthers their job security.
I think it depends mostly on the skill level of your test team, the tools available, and the team culture with respect to how developers and testers interact with each other. My current situation is that we have a relatively technical test team. All testers are expected to have development skills. In our case, testers write UI Automation. If your test team doesn't have those skills they will not be set up for success. In that case, it may be best for developers to write you UI automation.
Other factors to consider:
What other testing tasks are on the testers' plate?
Who are your customers and what are their expectations related to quality?
What is the skill level of the development team and what is their willingness to take on test automation work?
-Ron
What constitutes a good CI build-process?
We use CI, but is deployment to production even a realistic CI goal when you have dependencies on several services that should be deployed too and other apps may depend on these too.
Is a good good CI build process good enough when its automated to QA and manual from there?
Well "it depends" :)
We use our CI system to:
build & unit test
deploy to single box, run intergration tests and code analisys
deploy to lab environment
run acceptance tests in prod-like system
drop builds that pass to code drop for prod deployment
This is for a greenfield project of about a dozen services and databases deployed to 20+ servers, that also had dependencies on half a dozen other 'external' services.
Using a CI tool to deploy your product to a production environment as a realistic goal? again... "it depends"
Why would you want to do this?
if you have the process you can roll changes (and roll back) faster and more often
less chance for human error
you can test the same deployment strategy in a test environment before going to production and catch issues earlier
Some technical things you have to address before you can answer this:
what is the uptime requirements for your system -- Are you allowed to have downtime or does it need to be up 24/7?
do you have change control processes in place that require human intervention/approval?
is your deployment robust enough for any component to roll back to a known-good state if a deployment fails?
is your system designed to handle different versions of services or clients in case one or several component deployments fails (and you have the above rollback to last known good)?
does the process have the smarts to handle a partial deployment where a component cannot handle mixed versions of its dependencies/clients?
how are you handing database deployment/upgrades?
do you have monitoring in place so you know when something goes wrong?
Here are a couple of recent related links about automation and building the tools you need.
When it comes down to it the more complex your system the more difficult it is do automate everything, but that does not mean it is not a worthy goal, it just takes a lot more effort and willpower to get it done -- everything from knowing the difficulties you're going to face, the problems you have to account for (failure will happen), the political challenges of building infrastructure (vs. more product features).
Now heres the big secret... the technical challenges are challenging but not impossible... the political challenges may be insurmountable. Everything about this costs money whether its dev time or buying 3rd party solutions. So really, can you build the $1K, $10K, $100K, or $1M solution?
Whatever solution you go for make sure the automation is robust first, complete second... i.e. make sure you have as robust a solution as you can for getting deployment to a test environment rather than a fragile solution that deploys to production.
CI is not intended as a deployment mechanism. It is good to have your CI execute any automated deployment to a QA/Test server, to ensure those aspects of your build work, but I would not use a CI system like Cruise Control or Bamboo as the means of deployment.
CI is for building the codebase periodically to automate execution of automated tests, verification of the codebase via static analysis and other checks of that nature.
Be sure you understand the idea behind a CI build. CI stands for Continuous Integration and CI builds are really intended to be throw-away builds that are performed when a developer checks code in to the source control system (or at some specified interval) to ensure that the newest changes do not break the code base (hence the idea of continuously integrating the changes to the code base).
To that end, the technology used for the actual build server process is largely irrelevant compared to what actually happens during the build. As #pdavis mentioned, the CI build should compile the code base, execute some code analysis (FxCop, StyleCop, Lint, etc.), execute unit tests and code coverage, and execute any other custom analysis you want performed that should impact the concept of a "successful" or "failed" build.
Having a CI build automatically deploy to an environment really doesn't fall under the control of a build server. That being said, you can always create a separate project that runs on the build server that handles the deployment when it detects certain conditions (such as a build completes successfuly), but that should always be done as a completely independent thing.
I am starting on a new project at work that I am really looking forward to. We are still in the initial design stage and have just recently completed the Logical System Architecture. We have ordered new servers for the testing and staging environments and are setting up a Continuous Integration (CI) build system based on Cruise Control (http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/) and MSBuild (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wea2sca5.aspx) which is basically an improved port of ANT. It appears that Visual Studio 2005 project and solution files are all now in MSBuild format. Cruise Control will be automatically pulling the source from Visual Source Safe (ok, it isn't Subversion but we can deal), compiling it, and then running it through fxCop (http://www.gotdotnet.com/Team/FxCop/), nUnit (http://www.nunit.org/), nCover (http://ncover.org/site/), and last but not lease Simian (http://www.redhillconsulting.com.au/products/simian/). Cruise Control has a pretty good website interface for displaying all of the compiled results from the various tools and can even display code changes from one build to the next. It also keeps track of all builds in a build history. I'm looking forward to the test driven development and think that this type of approach combined with nUnit/nCover should give us a pretty good idea before we roll out changes that we haven't broken anything. There are also plans to incorporate some type of automated user interface testing once we are far enough along in the project. Depending on the tool, this should be just a matter of installing the tool on the build server and calling it from Cruise Control. Sweet.
A good CI process will have full or nearly-full unit test coverage. Unit tests test classes and methods, vs. integration tests, which test multiple parts of the system. When you set up your CI builds, have them automate the unit tests. That way, the CI builds can run multiple times per day. We have ours set to run every 2 hours.
You can have longer running builds that run once per day. These can use other services and run integration tests.
I was watching a ThoughtWorks presentation (creators of Cruise Control) and they actually addressed this issue. Their answer is that NO deployment is too complex to test. Why? Because otherwise, your customers become your testers, which is exactly where you don't want to be.
If you have a complex deployment structure, set up a visualization server. Have it pretend to be all the systems you need to talk to. They can always start in a known good state, because you can reset to a clean image.
To answer your initial question, a good process is one which enables communication between the repository and the developers. If the repository is in a bad state (non-compiling code, failed tests, etc.), the developers know about it as soon as possible, so that they can correct it.
The later a bug is discovered, the costlier it is to fix. So bugs should be discovered as early as possible. This is the motivation behind CI.
A good CI should ensure catching as many bugs as possible. The whole application comprises of code (often in multiple languages), Database schema, deployment files etc. Errors in any of these can cause bugs - so the CI should try to exercise as many of them as possible.
CI does not replace a proper QA discipline. Also, CI need not be very comprehensive on day one of the project. One can start with a simple CI process that does basic compilation & unit testing initially. As you discover more classes of bugs in QA, you should adapt the CI process to try to catch future occurrences of those bugs. It can also involve static code-analysis checks, so that you can implement consistent coding and design ideals across the codebase.