Automatic tests have recently gained more and more popularity. They are an ideal complement to manual tests and allow you to automate this process. Testers create tools that automatically check the indicated scenarios while assessing their results. The very process of creating these tools is mainly based on programming and is quite time-consuming. However, by investing time in solidly prepared automated tests, you can be sure that you will save a lot of it while testing the solution at every stage of development. So this is an investment that pays off!

However, the road to automating tests is not easy, and there are many challenges when creating tools. The following article describes the technologies, processes, and problems I encountered when automating the application written in React Native.

Due to many years of experience in maintaining high-quality applications created by Leaware, I encourage you to learn about the benefits of these solutions.

Automatic tests – advantages

To begin with, I would like to draw attention to the most important benefits of using automated testing during application development.

Automatic tests provide the application with:

• Less labor-intensive regression testing.

• Possibility of simultaneous verification of many users, mobile devices as well as configurations and data sets.

• Reduction of labor consumption in the manual testing team.

• Reduction of test execution time.

• The ability to run tests at any time.

• The ability to run automated tests simultaneously in different environments.

• Automatic verification of data processed by applications.

• Test repeatability and elimination of human errors.

• Extended application area covered by tests

As you can see, the range of advantages is extensive, and it’s hard to undermine the value and usability of automated testing in the development process of a new IT project. Creating automated test tools is not a simple task, however, especially if you are creating them for the first time.

The use of BDD methodology in automated tests

When writing automated tests at Leaware.com, we often use the BDD methodology, which allows you to define customer requirements clearly, and thus the main functionalities that should be included in automated tests.

How’s it working?

Customer requirements are written in the Gherkin language, which we connect to the SpecFlow framework, thanks to which individual “test” steps are automatically generated, and testers can take care of their implementation. Using the design pattern, which is a set of rules that should be followed in writing the code so that it is uniform, understood, and supported by all team members. When creating automatic tests, we use the pattern Page Object Pattern. It prevents code repeatability, and tests become more comfortable to maintain.

Below is an example of the BDD scenario:

Automatic tests are written in C # using the Appium and Selenium WebDriver frameworks; this is a popular tool used to write automated tests. There are many articles on the subject on the Internet. The facilitation is also a large active community that willingly shares their problems and solutions to problems encountered.

An example of an automatic test:

 

Automatic tests ready – what next?

Ready tests are connected to the so-called pipeline as part of the Continous Integration Server, which is responsible for building and issuing a new version of the application. Thanks to this solution, when releasing each new version of the app, it must always go through automatic tests, which helps in the quick detection of errors, and possible regressions and increases the quality of the final product.

Running test on a mobile device:

Summary

The described process of creating automatic tests and the tools indicated in the article are successfully used in Leaware to build automation for the needs of projects. The method of creating automated tests is continuously being developed and adapted to newer technologies appearing on the market. It is worth following the latest trends and changing currently used processes for them. Test automation is a field that is developing dynamically. It is certainly not the easiest one but generates invaluable value for the entire development team and clients.