Best Testing tool for testing ExtJs application that can be easily automated on a Continuous Integration server - testing

I am new to the Testing Arena. I am working with a very heavy ExtJs application.
And I am looking for the best testing tool.
I came across a bunch of tools, but can't seem to make a decision.
1) Siesta 2) Jasmine 3) Riatest
I want to be able to deploy these tests easily on a CI server.
Siesta and Jasmine can both be used with PhantomJs to automate the tests, but which one is better and easy to use?
As long as I can generate various clicks correctly and capture output, I'm cool.
Any help is appreciated.

Our company is moving from a Java based client to an ExtJS web and mobile application. We use QTP/UFT for Java automation which is slow, buggy, expensive, and cannot get passed the DOM easily so I started investigating Siesta recently. It seems like a viable option in my book but I admit I haven't checked out the other applications.
The initial setup with Siesta took longer than expected but with its event recorder, it makes it a gratifying transition. The recorder still requires debugging. I'm in QA and know how to script using Python, Bash, etc but it's definitely a learning curve to transition from VBScript to ExtJs/Siesta JavaScript. They have an open source version and a free 45 day trial to check out.
I've read about HTML Robot and SmartBear. Here's a post on the Sencha forums that talks about different automation software. Sencha also plans to release some kind of automation involving SenchaCmd during SenchaCon 2015 this April 7 to 9.

You should take a tool which covers your needs and improve the software quality.
Jasmine is good for unit tests without much gui interaction, you should use this to test your domain logic (e.g. stores, models, ...). Jasmine can run on every environment, a simple server with nodejs runtime is enought.
For regression tests the choice is yours. What tool you are comfortable with? Choosing a tool is one part, using it is another. Riatest seems like a windows application, are you able to run this on your CI server?
Evaluate them with your dev team and then make a choice for the long run.

Related

Testing Framework vs Testing tool

I am new to testing. The commonly used terms like Framework and tool confuses me a lot. Can anyone please explain me the difference between a Framework like STAF[software testing automation framework]and Tool like selenium.
Also how to select a tool for a particular framework. What are the criterias used for selection?
Brief explanations are welcomed!!
Tool:
Simply put, a tool is a software. In case of test automation, tools are software that let you automate your tests on an application. There are many test automation tools that you can choose from depending on your requirements. Some examples are Selenium, UFT, Visual Studio CUIT, Jamo Solutions Meux Test, T-Plan Robot, Telerik Test Studio etc.
Often, you'll have to write tests in the tools using a supported programming language. For instance, testers using UFT need to code in VB while those using Visual Studio can code in both VB and C#. However, some testing tools (like Telerik Test Studio) let you write script-less tests where your tests will consist of a bunch of easily understandable keywords, not code.
Framework:
The most popular test automation tools like Selenium and Visual Studio provide all the basic features you require to build your own tests. However, they do not provide ready-made features (like Reporting and Exception Handling) for testing. This requires the creation of a 'Framework' which is nothing but a collection of code written using a tool of one's choice that makes testing an application easy. Simply put, a framework is what you create with a tool (or a collection of tools) to test your application.
A typical framework consists of two parts: test scripts and function libraries. Test Scripts are the pieces of code that need to be executed to perform actions on the application under test (AUT). Function Libraries are classes consisting of important functions that are called by your test scripts. These can include timing functions, reporting/logging functions, exception handling functions, data communication functions etc.
You can also use an external database to pass test data to your test scripts during run-time instead of hard-coding it in your test scripts. Frameworks that employ external databases are called data-driven frameworks. The external database can be of your choice, be it a SQL Server, an XML file or a simple Excel spreadsheet. Data-driven frameworks make use of APIs or include custom-made classes that let you communicate with the database to transfer data.
Another type of framework is the keyword-driven framework. These frameworks are used in long-term test automation projects that require scripting of thousands of test cases. The main objective of these frameworks is to reduce the time taken to script a test case by reusing code that has already been written. They often include very strong function libraries which enable scripting of test cases using just predefined keywords. For example, common actions on an application like login and logout are performed by single line codes like:
Actions.Login();
and
Actions.Logout();
where Actions is a Function Library that consists of the Login() and Logout() functions. This massively reduces the script size and the long-term maintenance requirements of the test script, among other benefits.
Of course, you can either build a test automation framework and use it for your own application or create a generic test automation framework and make it available to the testing community for everyone to use, which is what STAF is.
Selection of testing tools:
To address your second question, there is no straight-forward answer to it. There are a number of criteria that can affect your decision. But in the end, it is all about your requirements and the requirements of your AUT.
If it is a Windows desktop app, you have to use Coded UI Tests in
Visual Studio.
If it is a Web application, you can use Selenium, UFT, Visual Studio or Test Studio.
If it is a mobile app, you can use Appium, Jamo Solutions Meux Test or T-Plan Robot.
If you want to test your mobile app over a large number of devices
and platforms, you can use cloud-based tools like Sauce Labs,
Perfecto Mobile or Device Anywhere.
If you are short on budget, you'll be better off using open source tools over
commercial tools, and so on.
Application Testing is a huge industry now and there is no dearth of testing tools available in the market. You will find the perfect tool for you if you know what you want and do some research on Google.
I will try to answer what I believe people normally use these terms to mean, lets start with the simpler term: A tool.
A tool like selenium is what actually does the automation, it has an API that will work for pretty much anything it covers (in this case websites) but it knows nothing about how the website you want to test works, this means it deals with low level constructs such as elements on a page and clicks.
A framework is normally just wrapping a tool to make it easier to make a test by imparting knowledge of your application, a standard example is login.
Say you want a test that checks when you enter a correct username and password in you get access to application. Using just selenium it would something like:
driver.findElement(By.id("username").sendKeys("MyUsername");
driver.findElement(By.id("password").sendKeys("password123");
driver.findElement(By.id("login").click();
Thats pretty simple, but as you can guess login is going to be used a lot across your tests and so it makes sense to move this into a place that makes it easier to reuse (both from a less code stand point and maintainability). This is where a framework comes into play, normally with selenium it will be page objects (see here)
Base on my understanding:
TOOLS
We "USE" tools to meet our objective (can be own self or your small groups of team).
Example: We use Selenium IDE as a tools helps us to automate some repetitive steps to do certain verification during our smoke test.
FRAMEWORK
We "DESIGN" a framework to meet the organization mission.
Things to consider when we design the framework including:
Maintainability
Reusability
Data Driven
Reporting
Schedule running through CI tools like Jenkins
Example: We design a Test Automation Framework by using WebDriver + Java + TestNG + ANT, to meet the objective to identify our current code base stability, and the test will be trigger and run by jenkins in a daily basis, SSRS report will captured in a daily basis as well each time the test finished. Stakeholders can review the daily code stability report anytime he/she needed.
Hope that can help you :D

Automatic testing of web applications with Selenium

is there any tool out there that i can used to set-up run automatically and i was goggling and i found selenium test runner? there are so many tools out there its hard to figured out which is best
I'm using C# and using MSTest as a test framework and I'm looking forward to see if I can get a way from testing in MSTEST
any help?
This is very subjective question. Every requirement will have its own correct answer. Anyhow I will try to address few requirements and will be updating as I learn more.
If you are automating web app browser tests (sans flash player and silverlight) I would say that selenium is the way to go. There are ways to automate flash and silverlight too, but that is answer for another question.
Selenium is anyways an automation too and your choice will rather is of which test framework to select. So here are few options:
1. Integrating with CI tools:
If you want to organize your tests as segregated atomic units and want them to be integrated to some CI server (e.g. TeamCity). I will recommend using NUnit to run your selenium tests.
2. Behavioral Tests
It is a new trend in the software development and how we test our products. Using behavioral (i.e. business specification) like language. In my experience it is also a very good format to write up acceptance tests. You can use selenium with something like Nbehave or SpecFlow
3. Centralize Test management and Execution
Now this might not fit for everyone but I have found FitNesse (and its c# binding) to be very useful in maintaining and executing selenium test cases.
Please note this answer may not be right and is certainly not complete given the scope of the question. I have nevertheless tried provide few pointers.

Does anyone use Sikuli as a testing tool?

Hi I have a Swing application to test and I found Sikuli a nice tool to do it, but I am a little worried about the size of the community and if it's being continually developed and it's being used by other companies.
Do you use it?
For what?
Is it stable?
Is it the best tool for the job you needed?
I use it in my company, too.
It can be used quite easily for not too complex gui-tests.
Sikuli was not developed for the last year but development is now increasing again.
Questions in the Sikuli-FAQ section on launchpad are answered fast although the community is not that big.
In my company, Sikuli is used for gui testing which was previously done by human testers.
It saves some time but not everything is automatable with Sikuli, e.g. the OCR functionality is not dependable (but will be updated from tesseract 2.04 to 3 in the near future).
For my job it was the best tool because it is the only open source (=free) tool I found that provides screenshot based automation that can be integrated with other systems like CI-systems and is programmable with Java and Python which makes easy unit testing possible with JUnit or PyUnit.
Hope I could help.
Yes we use it in-house for testing. It is actively supported. I have reported bugs in Sikuli and have had tickets and workarounds suggested within days with the bugs fixed in the next revision.
It is quite stable. The problems I have encountered typically come from not specifying images correctly and the program selecting an incorrect area of the screen.
One of our more unique uses was creating a set of automated bench tests for a legacy embedded system. The system was written in assembly and had no unit testing capabilities. It communicated with a custom legacy PC application. Rather than try to locate the PC source code, reverse engineer the design, and then write some meaningful bench tests, we created a number of Sikuli scripts to interface with the PC app. It saved weeks of development.
Yes, we use it for automating GUI tests. It's used mostly for old systems that were developed with no test driven back end. (ie: no testing api)
We tests some very complex tools including a debugger using Sikuli.
We tend not to use the Sikuli IDE though.

End to end testing framework recommendations

I am in a new project that is looking to include an end to end testing framework.
We want something flexible, I've used Fitnesse before and I think we need something similar to it.
We are also using Hudson CI and are looking for something that would integrate easily with it.
Is there a clear winner?
UPDATED: The system has many components, some of them are web services running on tomcat, there are a couple of NoSQL databases too, but no UI testing is required for the moment.
Please add a comment if further clarification on the project details is needed.
The robot framework is a good keyword driven testing framework that we use for end to end integration testing.
http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/
There is a plugin for jenkins (a fork of hudson) that is very useful. It reportedly works with hudson as well.
Great to read you have decided start using Robot Framework. Its Hudson plugin already has recently got much better (trend charts, available from Hudson directly, ...) and moved to new place:
http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Robot+Framework+Plugin
Can you be more specific, when you say, you want to have an end-to-end testing framework? What kind of application are you developing (standalone, web based, web service, ...)? What language do you program in?
I would also look for previous knowledge in your team or around your team (e.g. other teams). It might be sufficient, to use TestNG or JUnit (I have seen an old paper on UI testing using JUnit). Almost all test frameworks should be fine for Hudson, as long as they can be started in a headless/scripted mode and if they provide the results in a format that Hudson understands (in the worst case HTML is sufficent, though Hudson will only be able to display the pages). So if you have IBM Monitoring tools available, you might want to look at Rational Functional Tester or Rational Performance Tester.
FitNesse is a good tool for functional testing. The business contacts can create the test cases by themselfs (developers have to provide some connector code), which will create more visibility and removes some work from the test engineers. Drawback is, that you can't really do UI testing. If you need a open source plattform for UI, have a look at seam. Even though I like the OSS philosophi, you might need longer ramp up time (higher costs) and possibly more maintainace time for OSS (not true for all OSS). In any case, check how easy it is to get support for your framework. You might even consider paid support for your framework (regardless if open or closed source). Also don't forget, even though you can fix OSS source yourself, you might not have the expertise or time for fixing bugs or adding features.
So give us more info and we can give you better advices.
My experience with jBehave is very good. Recommend.
It's based on BDD - Behavior Driven Development.

How do I test my iOS Apps

My question maybe silly, but can anyone coach me?
Except doing some test(most likely white box testing) while coding, after the App was built, do we have some testing tools or special method for doing the test?
All I can imaging for now, is only manual testing the functionality of my App.
Thanks everyone.
Update: Added section 'Automated testing for iOS4'
As a professional tester my suggestion is that you should have a healthy mix of automated and manual testing. The Examples below are in .net but it should be easy to find a tool for whatever technique you are using.
AUTOMATED TESTING
Unit Testing
Use NUnit to test your classes, functions and interaction between them.
http://www.nunit.org/index.php
Automated Functional Testing
If it's possible you should automate a lot of the functional testing. Some frame works have functional testing built into them. Otherwise you have to use a tool for it. If you are developing web sites/applications you might want to look at Selenium.
http://www.peterkrantz.com/2005/selenium-for-aspnet/
Continuous Integration
Use CI to make sure all your automated tests run every time someone in your team makes a commit to the project.
http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html
Automated testing for iOS4
Automate the testing of your application by scripting touch events using the new UIAutomation Instrument.
Some links:
http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/1646-how-to-use-uiautomation-to-create-iphone-ui-tests/
http://cocoawithlove.com/2008/11/automated-user-interface-testing-on.html
http://alexvollmer.com/posts/2010/07/03/working-with-uiautomation/
MANUAL TESTING
As much as I love automated testing it is, IMHO, not a substitute for manual testing. The main reason being that an automated can only do what it is told and only verify what it has been informed to view as pass/fail. A human can use it's intelligence to find faults and raise questions that appear while testing something else.
Exploratory Testing
ET is a very low cost and effective way to find defects in a project. It take advantage of the intelligence of a human being and a teaches the testers/developers more about the project than any other testing technique i know of. Doing an ET session aimed at every feature deployed in the test environment is not only an effective way to find problems fast, but also a good way to learn and fun!
http://www.satisfice.com/articles/et-article.pdf
Take a look at automated testing tools. Supports automated and manual testing/sending feedback from within the app with annotated screen shots
I suggest you take a look at the iPhoneUnitTests sample code posted by Apple on their developer site.
FoneMonkey is a free and open source functional testing automation tool available for download from Gorilla Logic.
There a number of emerging options for automated functional testing, including Appium, Calabash, Frank, and Zucchini.
Much of testing any application is about understanding what you are testing and areas that should be tested. Some of this comes with experience, but types of things to consider testing about would be:
Functionality
iOS Design Guidelines / UI
Gestures
Connectivity
Types of devices to test on
Audio
Data
Crash reporting
Analytics
There's a big list of areas to cover.
I recommend Kiwi, its used for Behavior Driven Development. By far my favorite testing framework, makes testing much more fun, and test much readable and clear.
https://github.com/allending/Kiwi