Types of Application That Require End-to-End Testing

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What is End-to-End Testing? #

End-to-end testing is basically testing an application by simulating actual user flow. The general objective of which is to ensure the application, as a whole, works as expected. The application is tested for real-world performance such as connecting to the database, network and hardware resource usage, etc.

End-to-end testing looks into how each component of the app functions individually and alongside one another. It also checks that data passed through each component maintains its integrity.

Every application is a collection of smaller applications. Suppose one of these sub-applications fails, then the whole application crashes. End-to-end testing helps avoid such failures and crashes ever happening with users. 

How Does End-to-End Testing Benefit Developers? #

There are several reasons why end-to-end tests are important. Some we have already implied in the previous section. Here is a short list of the benefits for developers:

It ensures that the application is completely correct #

Some applications appear to work correctly and do not exhibit any bugs. However, some of the problems don’t appear until end-to-end tests are done. End-to-end testing verifies that, indeed, each component of the application functions as intended and data integrity is maintained.

It reduces cost for maintaining live applications #

When bugs reach production, it is harder to correct (and even harder to appease frustrated users). Running end-to-end tests thoroughly saves a company the time and money it takes to fix messes resulting from faulty data processing (for instance, in a Fintech application), hard-to-use UIs, and applications using up too much of the device’s resources.

It elevates confidence in developers and promotes user happiness #

When developers see that all potential issues and bugs in their application are fixed, they feel more confident about releasing the application. It follows that when users get their hands on the application, they are more likely to enjoy using it. (Who enjoys using an app that keeps crashing?)

Which Types of Web Applications Need End-to-End Testing The Most? #

While all applications should undergo end-to-end testing, certain applications have a greater need for it. These are applications that handle sensitive data, have complex user interfaces, or perform network-intensive tasks.

These types of applications also employ user-related workflows such as signup, login, and user-info editing. In some cases, there might be user verifications. These features obviously benefit a lot from end-to-end testing, so our list will focus on the types of apps in which the above-mentioned features are core components.

Chat Applications #

Source: Pinterest

Chat applications are one of the most network-intensive types of applications. They require WebSocket to enable a persistent communication between users and the server.

End-to-end testing may not need to test whether such persistent communication is maintained within the application (this can be taken for granted). What needs to be tested is whether the message exchange between two users happens smoothly.

For instance, we might want to test when one user sends the message: “Hello, how are you?” the recipient receives that exact message.

Social Networking Sites #

As the world is increasingly becoming more and more connected, nowadays, each person has, on average, signed up on more than 2 social networking platforms. We can expect the number of individual memberships to go up as more and more social networks appear.

For developers of such an application, one of the most crucial aspects or features they need to ensure is working properly is how they connect. We need to ensure that members can add other members.

Another key feature is information privacy. We must test whether a particular user profile can be accessed only by those given authorization by that particular user (i.e., their friends).

Financial Applications #

Source: Science Soft

Financial applications probably require more tests than other kinds of applications. For financial applications, we are not simply ensuring proper user workflow for user experience’s sake but also for financial data security reasons.

Let’s say we are testing a banking application we built. We might want to make sure that the connection to the database is impeccable. We don’t want the application to send $1,000 to another user when the user just intended to send $100.

On the security aspect of such an app, we want to make sure that the user session expires after a certain period of time.

E-commerce Applications #

While testing eCommerce applications, we want to ensure that users have a seamless shopping experience.

As such, we might want to test that product lists (including images and relevant data) load quickly. We should also test that the shopping cart information persists between user sessions (i.e., if the user isn’t ready to checkout yet, the shopping cart contents shouldn’t disappear when the user decides to log out).

We also would like to test whether the application will send a confirmation email once a purchase is made.

In Closing #

As responsible developers, we would like our creation to provide the best possible experience to our users. Thus, we incorporate testing in each step of the development process. End-to-end testing is not the most important test. Every test is important. But what end-to-end testing does is validates all the other tests we do.