Everything You Need to Know About Test Automation as a Service (TAaaS)

The enterprise-level digitization and adoption of DevOps and Agile have made test automation a necessity in today’s time. It reduces the time-to-market and hence the production cost. One can execute test automation on web/mobile/desktop application, performance, and APIs at once; generating a comprehensive report based on functionality, time, and build.

Test Automation as a Service is an on-demand automation offering that overrules manual testing. But before, let’s look at key problems with manual testing-

• It demands manual effort during release/enhancement.
• Manual testing requires greater resources.
• Testers usually avoid lengthy testing because of time and resource constraints.
• It has a limited scope of tests and cannot accomplish in-depth testing. In other words, manual testing has lesser coverage. 
• It requires testing the application on multiple computers, mobiles, tablets, etc. with different configurations.
• The scripts are not reusable, i.e. every time testing will require new scripts for instances like the change in OS version.

How Automation Speeds-up Testing by 70%?

Testing automation not only reduces manual efforts but also speeds-up the entire testing process. Here’s how.

• It cuts down the repetitive tasks/testing, which the test engineers used to do at the time of product release or enhancement.
• TAaaS covers lengthy testing, which was unattended by manual testing.
• It also increases the testing coverage with fewer resources.
• It finds critical defects at an early stage of testing.
• Its scripts are reusable. Testers need not code new scripts every time for system upgrades and OS version changes. Tests can recur without errors.

The following are the test automation tools categorized application-wise.

Web-based Application Automation

Selenium Webdriver is an open-source tool for automating web-based applications only. Users can test web applications using any web browser.

• Types of OS for testing in Selenium: Windows, Mac, Linux
• Browsers supported for testing: Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera

Additional Resource: Selenium Testing Automation Framework

Mobile-based Application Automation

Appium is an open-source tool to test web applications running in mobile browsers. It also supports the automation of native and hybrid mobile applications developed for iOS and Android OS. Appium uses Selenium API to test the applications.

You can test a mobile application in just four steps-

1. Write your test script on Eclipse.
2. Connect your device to Computer (PC).
3. Start Appium server.
4. Run your script (test cases).

Appium supports Chrome browser for testing Android apps and Safari for iOS.

API Automation

Testing is difficult in Java as compared to dynamic languages like Ruby and Groovy. REST Assured is a Java library that provides a domain-specific language (DSL) for writing powerful, maintainable tests for RESTful APIs. Most of the web services are based on REST architecture. Everything is a resource in the RESTful web service. It is lightweight, scalable, and allows creating easy to maintain web apps. How it works-

• REST Assured captures the (JSON) response of the API call.
• It validates if the response status code is equal to 200.

Windows App Automation

Winium is a Selenium-based open-source automation framework for the Windows platform. You can test your Windows App following these steps-

• Write your test script on Eclipse.
• Start Winium Desktop Driver.
• Set the path of application in the script.
• Using “UISpy” inspect the elements.
• Run your script (test cases).

Frameworks for Test Automation as a Service

A framework is a collection of reusable components that make the overall test execution and development easy and efficient. It is a custom tool designed by Framework Developers to simplify test automation processes.

A framework is a well-organized structure of components. For instance, one driver file executes an entire batch of commands without any manual intervention. The following are the types of frameworks along with the use scenarios specific to Test Automation as a Service protocol.

Data Driven Framework

This automation framework focuses on keeping test script logic and test data separate. For testing, it inputs data sets from a variety of sources like MS Excel Sheets, MS Access Tables, SQL Database, XML files, etc.

When the same test case needs to be executed multiple times with different data sets, the data-driven framework provides data to the test scripts.

Modular Driven Framework

Here, testers create test scripts for individual, small modules of the application. These small scripts (or test modules) can be combined into a master script to test specific scenarios or end-to-end testing. The test modules can also act as a library of functions to use in the future.

When applications contain a lot of modules, a modular framework is suitable for testing.

Keyword Driven Framework

This framework is also known as table-driven testing because it uses a table format to define keywords or action words for each function that the tester needs to execute. It’s a user-friendly framework. Test Engineers can develop test scripts even with limited knowledge of automation tools and programming language.

Behavior Driven Development Framework (Cucumber Framework)

It is a testing framework which supports Behavior Driven Development (BDD). It allows the tester to define application behavior in plain English and simple grammar as defined in Gherkin language. The following are the components of the cucumber framework.

Feature Files: It is an entry point to the cucumber tests. Here, the tester describes the test cases in a descriptive language like English. Feature files are important because they serve as an automation test script as well as live documents. A feature file can contain one or many scenarios. The following is a sample feature file.

#Author: your.email@your.domain.com

#Keywords Summary:

#Feature: List of scenarios.

#Scenario: Business rule through list of steps with arguments.

#Given: Some precondition step

#When: Some key actions

#Then: To observe outcomes or validation

#And, But: To enumerate more Given, When, Then steps

#Scenario Outline: List of steps for data driven as an Examples and <placeholder>

#Examples: Container for s table

#Background: List of steps run before each of the scenarios

#””” (Doc Strings)

#| (Data Tables)

#@ (Tags/Labels): To group Scenarios

#<> (placeholder)

#””

## (Comments)

#Sample Feature Definition Template

@tag

Feature: Title of your feature

I want to use this template for my feature file

  @tag1

  Scenario: Title of your scenario

Given I want to write a step with precondition

And some other precondition

When I complete action

    And some other action

And yet another action

Then I validate the outcomes

And check more outcomes

  @tag2

  Scenario Outline: Title of your scenario outline

Given I want to write a step with <name>

When I check for the <value> in step

Then I verify the <status> in step

Examples:

   | name | value | status |

   | name1 | 5 | success |

   | name2 | 7 | Fail    |

Apart from these testers also use Linear Scripting Framework and Hybrid Testing Framework for Test Automation.

Step Definitions: A Step definition is a small piece of code with a set pattern. The pattern links the Step Definition to all the matching steps. Cucumber executes a Step according to Gherkin Steps.

Test Runner: The JUnit runner uses the JUnit Framework to run cucumber. It is an open-source unit testing framework for Java. It is useful for writing and running repeat/reusable test cases. It requires a single empty class with an annotation-

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)

@CucumberOptions(features=”features”, glue = {“stepDefinitions”})

public class TestRunner {}

Also read – How to perform load testing on applications.

Best Practices for Creating an Effective Testing Framework

• Integrate Appium and Selenium to cover mobile and web testing together.
• Integrate REST Assured for API automation to ensure APIs are working as per set functionalities. It saves a great deal of time and resources.
• Integrate Winium/AutoIt for testing standalone applications.
• Integrate Cucumber for behaviour-driven development.
• Use Page Object Model to create generic packages of common classes (codes) that can be used over all the test scripts. It helps to achieve reusability of codes.
• Integrate JUnit to manage test cases and generate reports.
• Integrate Maven or Jenkins to achieve continuous testing. Jenkins also helps to run the script for lengthy testing and generate extended reports delivered to all stakeholders. It is useful for tests that take hours to days to complete.

We specialize in business-specific test automation services. Drop us a word at hello@mantralabsglobal.com to streamline and accelerate your product/solution launch.