4 Ways to Improve Test Automation Code
Test automation is the new norm for organizations looking forward to amping up their software testing efficiency and reducing the costs and time spent on manual testing. Companies are making enormous efforts to hire an automation testing company and utilize this technology to gain business profits. Whether a business is looking forward to automating at the system, Integration, or unit level, it is a daunting process. They don’t know where to get started and how to proceed further. It would be helpful if there were certain guidelines to help teams write better automation goods. Fortunately, there are some rules that exist and can help in improving your test automation code. Let’s have a look at 4 different ways to achieve this objective:
Validate Test Cases that will Actually Fail
It is important for developers working for an automation testing company to write test cases that will actually fail to ensure that your test automation works efficiently. Test automation should be able to identify bugs and prevent regressions in the app under test. Automated tests should validate that the system behaves as per requirements.
On the contrary, early birds in test automation do not assume that their assertions will fail. Developers write code that they expect will never fail. Thus, while writing your automated tests, make sure that you expect failure conditions to occur. In order to follow this tule, make sure you place a breakpoint in your code on an assertion line. It is necessary to execute code until that breakpoint. Developers need to ensure they force the failure condition to occur in the app under test and then cross the line of code with that assertion. If it fails, it means that your automated tests are working efficiently.
Make sure you don’t Repeat
Duplication is the primary enemy of a well-designed system – said Robert C. Martin a co-author of the Agile Manifesto. Although there is a list of other practices that can destroy code faster than duplication. Yet, avoiding duplication of code remains a primary concern for developers while writing their test automation code. It is crucial to prevent duplication at all levels and duplication can simply occur in between a few lines of code that are repeating.
It is important to remove duplication if validation points are occurring in multiple classes. One of the easiest ways to remove it is by moving the common code to a parent class. A parent class contains a method that performs two operations so that the single class doesn’t need a duplicate code. If in the single class, a special string needs to be validated, the parent class can force the child class to implement rules for that specific class. In order to achieve successful test automation, you need to remove duplication. Make sure you spare time to analyze the tests for signs of duplication and remove it from the code successfully.
Keep all Functions Small
Although this may sound strange, this is one of the most powerful rules to get your automated tests right. When developers create small functions, they can achieve success at a greater level. Firstly, it will be easy to name the functions. Secondly, the functions would be easier to understand. And thirdly, it would be possible to adhere to all functions in accordance with the single responsibility principle.
Write Code only for the Existing Requirements
This is a rule that emphasizes developers to stop over-engineering. It usually happens as a result of a developer trying to protect his code from future changes that are most likely to occur or not. There are several ways to over-engineer a test code. For instance, developers try to create code that can handle all future scenarios. Test engineers try to automate a page before they even need all the elements. They create a class that represents an HTML page. Instead of adding properties and methods that they require for the current test, and then they add all actions later to this certain class. This is a major mistake that developers make because if they are not sure that they can use the code again, then the chances are high that they have created huge classes that do not have usable code. So anyone who interacts with that code will navigate through useful methods and properties. This is a time-wasting process that developers should avoid and they should prevent them from writing complicated code.
By following the above-mentioned guidelines to write test automation code, development, and QA teams can ensure improving their automation testing efforts.
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