Unlocking the power of automation: An introduction to end-to-end testing

Paul Gilzow — Platform.sh

Every year we’re asked to “do more with less” while budgets continue to shrink. As a development team, how do we continue to manage all our responsibilities while taking on even more? Automation.

Notes:

• Cypress – Open source products that really streamlines the process
  • Not Selenium based
  • Super fast
  • Support all major browsers (except Safari for now)
• Installing Cypress
  • npm install cypress –save-dev
  • Set up testing script (spec)
    • Visit page
    • Grab title, confirm that it is correct cy.get(‘title’)
      • Starts at root
    • .should(‘contain’, ‘HighEdWeb 2024’)
• Testing
  • Break down into simplest steps
  • Test “happy” and “unhappy” paths
  • Phases:
    • Arrange (Set up application space)
    • Act: (Take steps)
    • Assert (did it succeed)
  • Write tests so they are independent of each other
  • Config – can define base URL to wrok against different enviroments
    • Variable stack and can be overwritten
• Managing state of applications
  • Stub requests
  • Static user (need to prep the DB with real user)
    • May effect later tests (as user does stuff)
  • Dynamic user
• Every test is done in an incognito window (which will screw with logged in functionality)
  • Answer is to set up login function to include on other tests
• Can also save session information cy.session and pass it in