Tips for Getting Most Out of Your E2E Testing
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Writing tests for code is a usual activity for good developers. There are many advantages to test-driven development (TDD). Everyone knows this; that’s why you might have seen experienced software engineers using different testing strategies for writing their tests. It depends on various factors, but there should be a good testing roadmap for your team to employ because it can save you a lot of time in the future.
There are various types of tests and different techniques for the implementation of testing. The main types are functional and non-functional testing.
Functional tests are related to the working of the software system under consideration. This includes E2E tests, unit tests, and integration tests. In comparison, non-functional tests are not directly related to the working of software like load balancing, security, volume, handling, and recovery testing.
Let’s see some of the essential tips that you need to keep in mind while writing E2E tests.
Decide the scope of your tests #
End-to-End Testing is usually used to test complete flow like login, checkout, or other flows in web applications. You must write these tests in such a way that every flow is separate. Sometimes, to test the whole flow, you end up writing tests that test one or multiple flows. To make debugging easier for yourself, split a large flow into multiple small flows so that it’s easier for you to debug and find out the point of failure in case something goes wrong. It can often be coupled with other forms of testing as well, including device testing.
Record the tests #
Testing frameworks offer you various tools to record and take screenshots of the screen if the test fails. Also, they offer you logs, which can be quite helpful to identify the main fault. These frameworks and libraries provide different options to see the stack trace when giving logging info. Also, you need to write reliable assertions so that you can easily debug the tests later.
Use waiting functions #
There are options in libraries to introduce a wait time in the flow of your test. Sometimes the flow which you are testing has a specific HTML element that takes time to load dynamically. Usually, if you go with the test flow, what it will do is that it will try to find the element. Often tests will fail here because of the unavailability of that particular DOM element. To avoid this, you can introduce some sleep or wait time. Try to increase the wait time to see if there’s some issue with DOM elements’ loading.
Use IDs for finding elements #
Another good tip is to always use unique identifiers for finding the elements in your tests. The problem with Xpath, Classnames, and other options is that they can change if developers change HTML code structure or do some overall changes. To reduce your dependence on the structure, you can use IDs for finding the elements. Using this will ensure that your tests stay intact while the structure of HTML code changes.
Conclusion #
These are some tips that can make it easier for you to write E2E tests for your apps. Alongside that, unit tests and integration tests are also necessary. Usually, it depends on the strength of developers, deadline, and delivery of the project because TDD prolongs the delivery time a bit. But still, writing tests is an excellent strategy to make sure that your code is not only error-free but also fool-proof.