Tools are great. Tools can make you and your colleagues' work lives so much less tedious on a daily basis. Where I work we have various long, complex processes that are incredibly easy to get wrong and spend half an hour trying to figure out what the problem was. Was it step one? Step five? ... Continue Reading →
How Would You Approach Exploratory API Testing?
Day 2 of MoT's 30 Days of Testing asks the question "How would you approach exploratory API Testing?". From the perspective of someone who has never done testing that I feel falls into the realm of 'real' exploratory testing, this is a tough question to answer. I'm going to approach this as "You've been told... Continue Reading →
What is API Testing?
To preface this, I've never really read a great deal about API testing. My opinion here is based on a little bit of reading, and a lot of doing. If you Google the definition of an API, you get the following: a set of functions and procedures that allow the creation of applications which access... Continue Reading →
Xpath: Friend Or Foe?
Over the years I've seen varying opinions on whether you should use Xpath locators as anything but a last resort. Back when I started I adopted the standpoint that I would avoid most usage of Xpath, but in situations where it really wasn't practical to have IDs added I would use it as a last... Continue Reading →
Simple Tip: Pass By Locators Into Methods For Maximum Versatility
This may seem like an obvious tip to many, but I've seen a few applications for automated tester roles at my company that fail to do this. When creating methods that interact with elements on a web page, remember to use Selenium WebDriver's By locators. These By locators are super versatile, and will allow you... Continue Reading →
Page Object Model Inheritance
Hopefully you already know the importance of using the Page Object Model to keep your code organised. To keep your code maintainable it's a good practice to have page inherit from a single abstract "BasePage" class. This allows us to have one central place that defines general actions that our pages can perform, and allows... Continue Reading →
Basic Page Object Model
Page objects are one of the simplest ways to organise your test automation code. The basic principle is to have a class that represents each of your pages. You then create methods to take the actions that a user would. Without some way of logically organising your code, it soon becomes impossible to maintain. The... Continue Reading →
How I Started In Test Automation
The first job that I worked as a QA/Software Tester was for a tiny company. There were 3 software developers at the time I joined, and I was their first tester. The product was a website that let users do some basic filing tasks, to keep track of their data a little more easily. It... Continue Reading →
QA Goose 