DEV Community: Rahul

LT Browser - Best Browser For Developers

Rahul — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 08:05:45 +0000

We hope you & your loved ones are staying safe & strong as we fight the COVID-19 pandemic together. Today, we’re live with a developer-friendly browser that lets you develop & test responsive web applications in a trice. We’re calling it the LT Browser and we promise it’s going to be a game changer for your development & test cycles. How? We’ll find that out soon enough but before we do that, we would like to thank all our users who were involved with the beta testing of LT Browser. Thanks to you, we were able to gather constructive feedback with well-thought suggestions to help us improve the product before we went live.

LT Browser – A Game Changer For Developers

You may have heard “Content is King”, it is a quote that’s been trending from an essay written by Bill Gates in 1996. Now, if your website or web-application isn’t responsive then your content is failing for your users. Here is an example for a non-responsive website.

Obviously, your users aren’t going to be impressed if reading content becomes troublesome for them. Which is why businesses can’t afford to neglect responsive web design. However, developing a responsive web application can pose multiple challenges.

You would need a separate design for responsive web-application or website which justifies your content over a smaller viewport and screen resolution for mobile devices or tablets. Then developers will have to put up extra effort and testers will need a significant amount of time to evaluate mobile view of website across various devices. Some of your stakeholders might be even against the idea to begin with. Probably because they’re worried about the time & bandwidth that gets squeezed out to accomplish the task.

Being a cross browser testing cloud, we understand how pivotal it becomes for a business to express itself through a website, and not only over different browsers but for different devices too! We realize the challenges that revolve around the implementation of responsive web design and we wanted to help ease this burden for the developer community. Which is why we’re up with the first release of our developer-centric browser that can help you build responsive web applications much faster and test them across any mobile device.

The LT Browser is designed to help developers & testers interact with the mobile view of their websites across multiple sizes of mobiles & tablets. You can perform live-interactive testing to check responsive design of your web-application in a side-by-side view. You could record videos, capture screenshots, debug responsive bugs with developer tools and do a lot more.

Download Now:

Cross Browser Testing With WebDriverIO

Rahul — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 10:18:41 +0000

In case you are using JavaScript for cross browser testing, you would have surely come across the WebDriverIO framework. It is one of the popular test automation frameworks that is built over NodeJS. Like me, there are many folks who consider WebDriverIO as a favourable option for Selenium test automation. WebDriverIO is also an open-source project like the hugely popular Selenium automation framework. Extensibility, rich feature-set, ease of installation, and support for TDD & BDD frameworks are some of the major plus points of the WebDriveIO framework.

WebDriverIO holds a position in the list of the best 9 JavaScript testing frameworks, one of the many reasons why you should learn WebDriverIO for JavaScript test automation. In the ongoing series of the WebDriverIO JavaScript tutorial, we look at how the WebDriverIO automation framework can be rightly leveraged for performing cross browser testing.

Introduction to WebDriverIO automation framework

WebDriverIO is the next-generation browser and test automation framework that is preferred by JavaScript developers for performing cross browser testing. Here is the overall architecture of the WebDriverIO test automation framework:

As seen in the architecture diagram, the JavaScript code implemented by the user is sent by the WebDriverIO via NodeJS to the Services through the JSON Wire Protocol. The subsequent request is then sent to the corresponding browser where appropriate actions are performed on the WebElements in the DOM.

The WebDriverIO project is available on GitHub and the overall statistics speak a lot about the popularity of this JavaScript framework. It has more than 6.7K stars and the project has been forked around 1.9K times. As of writing this blog, the latest version of the WebDriverIO JavaScript framework is 7.7.2

You can also refer to our detailed WebDriverIO JavaScript tutorial for Selenium test automation to get a quick overview of the WebDriverIO framework. It will also provide you with information related to the setting up of the WebDriverIO framework.

Why WebDriverIO for cross browser testing

For starters, cross browser compatibility testing is not only about testing the product features on different browser combinations. It is also about testing the compatibility on different devices and platforms (or operating systems). On the whole, cross browser compatibility testing does not cater only to web browsers.

WebDriverIO framework in JavaScript provides a range of commands that let you interact with the WebElements, perform navigation with the web browser, and manage page loads more effectively. Please refer to our blog titled Browser Commands in WebDriverIO where we have covered WebDriverIO commands for Selenium web automation.

To summarize, here are the major benefits of cross browser testing on a reliable and scalable cloud-based Selenium Grid:

Faster browser coverage
Fast platform coverage
Great quality of product vastly
Platform related issues
Unique product behaviour

How to do cross browser testing using WebDriverIO

So far in this blog of the WebDriverIO JavaScript tutorial, we have covered the essentials of cross browser testing and features of the WebDriverIO framework. Before running cross browser tests with WebDriverIO, it is essential to download the browser driver of the web browser on which the test has to be performed.

Here are the links to download drivers for some major browsers:

In this WebDriverIO JavaScript tutorial, we will first show how to use WebDriverIO for cross browser testing on local Selenium Grid and later we will also demonstrate the usage of cloud-based Selenium Grid.

Once you have installed the browser driver, you need to mention the capability in the Wdio.conf.js file. You can also write different versions of each browser and platform.

Install the dev dependency by running the following command on the terminal:

npm install @wdio/selenium-standalone-service --save-dev

{
 "devDependencies": {
  @wdio/selenium-standalone-service": "^6.0.16"
 }
}

Here is how we set the web browser capabilities in WebDriverIO JavaScript.

.config = {
services: ["selenium-standalone"],

    // ...
    capabilities: {
            capabilities: {
                browserName: 'chrome'
            }
    }
    // ...
}

{"mode":"full","isActive":false}

It is important that the services option is selected as selenium-standalone. As seen in the above snippet, the browser under test is Chrome. Shown below is the snippet where the browser capability is set to Firefox.

.config = {
services: ["selenium-standalone"],
    // ...
    capabilities: {
            capabilities: {
                browserName: 'firefox'
            }
    }
    // ...
}

You can add additional capabilities in WebDriverIO as shown below:

platformName: "macOS High Sierra", // macOS High Sierra & Windows 10
browserName: "Safari",
browserVersion: "11.0",

So far in this WebDriverIO JavaScript tutorial, we were using browser objects in order to write steps and execute them on the requisite browser(s) through configuring the Wdio.conf.js file. What if you want the automation on specified browser objects? You just have to configure each browser capability shown above and access each object using the browser name (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, etc.)

For demonstrating cross browser testing with WebDriverIO in JavaScript, we will run a single script on both browser combinations (i.e. Chrome and Firefox). Separate tests are run for each web browser.

If you get [0-0] Error: Failed to create session. , then check if the selenium-standalone server is running or not. If not, start the Selenium Standalone Server using the following command:

selenium-standalone start

Shown below is the configuration file (i.e. Package.json) that will be used for configuring the tests being run on the Selenium Grid:

{
   "name": "LambdaTestDemo",
   "version": "1.0.0",
   "description": "",
   "main": "index.js",
   "scripts": {
       "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
   },
   "keywords": [],
   "author": "",
   "license": "ISC",
   "devDependencies": {
       "chromedriver": "^80.0.1",
       "wdio-chromedriver-service": "^6.0.0",
       "@wdio/cli": "^6.1.12",
       "@wdio/local-runner": "^6.1.12",
       "@wdio/mocha-framework": "^6.1.8",
       "@wdio/selenium-standalone-service": "^6.0.16",
       "@wdio/spec-reporter": "^6.1.12",
       "@wdio/sync": "^6.1.8"
   }
}
{"mode":"full","isActive":false}

Running Single Cross Browser Script on Multiple Browser Combinations

When performing cross browser testing with a JavaScript-based automation framework like WebDriverIO, you would come across scenarios where the same test has to be run on different browsers. The intent of such a test is to verify if the tests run in a similar way on those browsers, if not the discrepancies have to be caught!

Here is the implementation of how the WebDriverIO JavaScript framework is used for running automated browser test on different browser combinations:

describe("This is example of Cross browser Testing ", function () {

   it("Google - both browsers", function () {
       browser.url("/");
       browser.pause(5000);
       browser.$("=JavaScript Alerts").click();
       browser.pause(5000);
       browser.$(".//button[text()='Click for JS Alert']").click();
       browser.pause(5000);
       browser.acceptAlert();
       browser.pause(5000);
   });
});

capabilities: [
       {
           browserName: "firefox", // browserName: "chrome",
       },
   ],
{"mode":"full","isActive":false}

As shown above, we have set the browser under test as Firefox. This is done using the browserName parameter.

Here is how you set the capabilities so that the same test runs on two different browsers (e.g. Chrome and Firefox).

capabilities: [
       {
           browserName: "firefox",
       },
       {
           browserName: "chrome",
       },
   ],
{"mode":"full","isActive":false}

Running Separate Cross Browser Scripts on Multiple Browser Combinations

There are umpteen scenarios where you would want a specific set of tests to run on certain browsers and the remaining tests on other browser combinations. Shown below is the JavaScript implementation using WebDriverIO where two separate cross browser testing scenarios are run on the target URL.

As seen in the implementation, test – 1 is run on the Chrome browser and test – 2 is run on the Firefox browser.

describe("This is example of Cross browser Testing ", function () {
   it("Google - Chrome", function () {
       _chromeBrowser.url("http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/");
       _chromeBrowser.pause(5000);
       _chromeBrowser.$("=JavaScript Alerts").click();
       _chromeBrowser.pause(5000);
       _chromeBrowser.$(".//button[text()='Click for JS Alert']").click();
       _chromeBrowser.pause(5000);
       _chromeBrowser.acceptAlert();
       _chromeBrowser.pause(5000);
   });
   it("Google - firefox", function () {
       _firefoxBrowser.url("http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/");
       _firefoxBrowser.pause(5000);
       _firefoxBrowser.$("=JavaScript Alerts").click();
       _firefoxBrowser.pause(5000);
       _firefoxBrowser.$(".//button[text()='Click for JS Alert']").click();
       _firefoxBrowser.pause(5000);
       _firefoxBrowser.acceptAlert();
       _firefoxBrowser.pause(5000);
   });

});

This file contains the browser capabilities which are used by the test code.

capabilities: {
       _chromeBrowser: {
           capabilities: {
               browserName: "chrome",
           },
       },
       _firefoxBrowser: {
           capabilities: {
               browserName: "firefox",
           },
       },
   },

In scenario 2, we are using _chromeBrowser and _firefoxBrowser to control the script. Scenario 2 is also known as Multi-remote Browser in WebDriverIO, a concept in the WebDriverIO framework that we will cover in subsequent blogs of this WebDriverIO JavaScript tutorial.

In scenario 1, both browsers start the execution at the same time whereas, in scenario 2, execution starts one by one.

Scenario 1 execution log

Scenario 2 execution log

Cross browser testing with WebDriverIO on cloud Selenium Grid

One thing that you would have observed is that automated browser testing using JavaScript based frameworks require the installation of local browser drivers. This is a big bottleneck with automated browser testing performed on a local Selenium Grid.

Rather than running tests on a local Selenium Grid, you can opt for testing on a cloud-based Selenium Grid like LambdaTest. Selenium testing on the cloud (e.g. LambdaTest) provides benefits like improved scalability, reliability, faster test execution (through parallelism), improved test coverage, and detailed insights into test execution.

Once you create an account on LambdaTest, you need to make a note of the user-name and access-key from the LamdaTest profile section. You can use the LambdaTest capabilities generator to generate the capabilities for the corresponding browser & OS combination.

You can also perform parallel testing in Selenium by taking into account different browser and OS combinations on which tests have to be performed. Here is how you can create capabilities for two or more browsers in LambdaTest:

export.config = {
    // ...
    capabilities: {
        chromeBrowser: {
            capabilities: {
                browserName: 'chrome'
            }
        },
        firefoxBrowser: {
            capabilities: {
                browserName: 'firefox'
            }
        }
    }
    // ...
}

It is very easy to port an existing WebDriverIO test running on a local Selenium Grid to cloud-based Selenium Grid by LambdaTest. Let’s see how to configure it.

Open your terminal go to your project root folder, run below command to add the necessary dependencies:

npm i wdio-lambdatest-service --save-dev

On successful execution, you will see below entry in package.json file

{
    "devDependencies": {
        "wdio-lambdatest-service": "^1.0.0"
    }
}

If your website is hosted locally, then set tunnel:true in Wdio.config.js file.

// wdio.conf.js
export.config = {
    // ...
    user: process.env.LT_USERNAME,
    key: process.env.LT_ACCESS_KEY,
    services: [
        ['lambdatest', {
            tunnel: true
        }]
    ],
    // ...
};
{"mode":"full","isActive":false}

In case you are not testing locally hosted pages (i.e. the pages are located on the server), you need to add the following JavaScript parameters in the Wdio.config.js file:

path: “/wd/hub”
user: "user_name_on_LambdaTeste",
key: "access_key_on_LambdaTest",
hostname: "hub.lambdatest.com",
port: 80,
services: ["lambdatest"],

Here is the complete Configuration file (i.e. Wdio.config.js) where we have defined the number of parallel sessions to 5. The test is conducted on two different browser & OS combination (i.e. Chrome 79.0 on Windows 10 and Safari 11.0 on macOS High Sierra).

exports.config = {
   outputDir: "absolute_path_output_dir",
   runner: "local",
   path: "/wd/hub",
   specs: ["./test/specs/**/CrossBrowserTesting.js"],
   exclude: [
       // 'path/to/excluded/files'
   ],

   maxInstances: 10,
   user: "user_name",
   key: "access_key",
   capabilities: [
       {

           maxInstances: 5,         
           name: "Cross browser testing - Safari-Mac", // name of the test,
           build: "CrossBrowserTesting",
           platformName: "macOS High Sierra", // macOS High Sierra & Windows 10
           browserName: "Safari",
           browserVersion: "11.0",
           video: true,
           console: true,
           visual: false,
       },
       {
           name: "Cross browser testing - Safari-Mac", // name of the test,
           build: "CrossBrowserTesting",
           platformName: "Windows 10", // macOS High Sierra & Windows 10
           browserName: "Chrome",
           browserVersion: "79.0",
           video: true,
           console: true,
           visual: false,
       },
   ],
   coloredLogs: true,
   hostname: "hub.lambdatest.com",
   port: 80,
   baseUrl: "http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/",
   waitforTimeout: 10000,
   connectionRetryTimeout: 90000,
   connectionRetryCount: 1,

   services: ["lambdatest"],
   // Test Code
};

Shown below is the execution snapshot on LambdaTest:

It’s a Wrap

In this part of the WebDriverIO JavaScript tutorial series, we looked at how to configure the Chrome and Firefox browsers for running WebDriverIO JavaScript tests on the respective web browsers. Using cloud-based Selenium Grid on LambdaTest, you can run tests using WebDriverIO on multiple browser & OS combinations. Accelerate the speed of cross browser tests by running WebDriverIO tests in parallel on the cloud-based Grid. This is how you can take ultimate advantage of cross browser testing using WebDriverIO JavaScript.

Do check out the WebDriverIO Learning Hub on LambdaTest to get acquainted with the overall capabilities of WebDriverIO and how you can use those capabilities for achieving optimum test coverage.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article that is a part of the ongoing WebDriverIO JavaScript tutorial series. Do leave a note as to how you run cross browser testing with the WebDriverIO framework…

Happy Testing!

Scalable and Reliable Cross Browser Testing With Cypress Framework

Rahul — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 10:08:36 +0000

The Cypress automation framework is gaining wider adoption with the automation testing fraternity. It is a JavaScript-based testing framework that is primarily built for testing modern web applications.

Intrigued to learn about automation of web applications (and websites) with the Cypress Framework? If so, make sure to attend our webinar on Cypress framework with Narayanan Palani - Best-Selling Author, Chapter Lead of Major Financial Institution, London where he will demonstrate valuable tips & tricks to run Cypress automation tests at scale.

These would be the key takeaways from the webinar on 'Automation testing with Cypress' Introduction to the Cypress Framework.

Register Here: Scalable and Reliable Cross Browser Testing With Cypress Framework

What Will You Learn

Why Cypress Over Selenium
End-to-End Testing with Cypress Framework
Making the most out of Cypress with LambdaTest (Parallel testing, visual testing, and other things applicable)
Patterns & Practices for Cypress Testing
The Magic of the Cypress Dashboard
Avoiding Flaky tests in Cypress

Date And Time: 20 July 2021, 10 am PST

Can’t attend the webinar? Register and we’ll send you the recorded video.

Overcoming Top Challenges With In-Sprint Test Automation

Rahul — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 08:23:54 +0000

The role of QA teams has utterly changed in the last few years, especially after the initiation of agile development methodologies in software development. From the Waterfall model, where testing was performed after the development phase, to more iterative approaches like Agile and DevOps, QA teams have come a long way. We are now pushing it even further by implementing in-sprint test automation, where the entire testing process is performed in one sprint.

Being a tester, I know the prominence of continuous delivery, and it’s hard to achieve, especially with in-sprint automation testing. In the beginning, it doesn’t seem very comforting to execute sprints, as multiple challenges can result in failed sprints. So, when we failed in our first sprint, we started working on identifying the reasons behind the failure and what could be done to overcome the obstacles that are faced during in-sprint test automation.

After learning from the mistakes, we thought of sharing our experience with other testers, who are just beginning with in-sprint test automation, to understand the challenges they can encounter during the process. Besides, we’ll also share some practical tips for successful in-sprint test automation.

Challenges With In-Sprint Automation Testing

When we talk about in-sprint test automation challenges, the list is pretty long, and neglecting any of these could lead to a failed sprint. Here, we have tried to cover every problem that we faced during sprint automation testing.

1. Varying Requests or Last Minute Modifications

In sprint test automation, the requirements are captured in the form of “user stories,” which offer a brief description of the customer-relevant functionality. Often, the management team changes the requirements at the last minute, resulting in dropping the stories mid-sprint. It is no less than a nightmare for QA teams, as they need to discard or modify the work that has already been carried out. Also, it can affect the entire scope of testing.

Overcoming this Challenge: After knowing this scenario, we prepared ourselves for the next time. We realized that agile projects’ changes are inevitable, and we should be prepared to act and modify the management processes as per changing conditions. Also, we shared as much information as possible regarding the tests that have been executed and functions that are not appropriately tested towards the end of the sprint. It helped us make an informed decision about the required changes to the sprint without affecting its quality.

2. Lack of Information on User Stories

The user stories in agile projects are created by the product owner, who always doesn’t have all the information related to a feature, so they cannot provide proper acceptance criteria for the feature’s behavior. In such cases, developers are asked to develop a prototype that can be utilized to learn more about the functionality or behavior of the feature. This, in turn, makes it complicated for testers to create effective test cases without proper information and understanding of the feature.

Overcoming this Challenge: Well, it’s not necessary to have detailed information about any feature to begin in-sprint automation testing; we can start our tests by considering the high-level scenarios that can test the idea of the story. Even if the details related to feature change, the context will remain the same, so drafting high-level test scenarios would be very useful for us.

3. Wrong Estimation of Stories

During testing, everything is not in our favor all the time. When we fail to understand a story’s complexity, having the wrong estimation about it is very common. This often deters us from our intentional timelines within the sprint. I still remember the incident when we assumed that implementing a user story would be simplistic with an estimation of 9-10 hours. But, when we learned about the dependencies, we had to redesign the whole code during implementation for security and performance purposes, which increased our time to 20 hours.

Overcoming the Challenge: If this is a one-time case, then dealing with it is pretty straightforward. If you are committing this mistake, again and again, it could lead to failed sprints. To avoid this, make sure you determine a story’s dependencies before estimating its execution time. This way, you will learn what parts of the story you have to test and how much time it would take.

4. Repeated Regression Cycles

Adding features to a product time-to-time is a pervasive process, but it also creates regressions in previous features. So, we need to use regression testing to verify the problems and fix them accordingly. But, manual regression testing is not a viable approach for agile projects. Also, modern web applications render differently on different browsers or devices, making it complicated for testers to test the compatibility of the application.

Overcoming this Challenge: The best approach to deal with frequent regression cycles is to use in-sprint automation. You can use automation tools like Selenium Grid or JMeter to verify that the recent changes have not broken the code. There is no regression in the basic functionality of the application.

5. Definition of Done

In-sprint test automation is an ongoing activity, but we all need a definition of ‘Done’ to stay on the same page. It helps us analyze all the activities that need to be done before a product increment, such as building tests, integration, documentation, etc. However, the meaning of done is not always clear to every team member. For some members, completing their specific tasks means they are done, even without knowing what other members are up to. Having absurd or various descriptions of being done could lead to failed sprints.

Overcoming this Challenge: To have a clear definition of ‘Done,’ it is crucial to ensure that all the team members are on the same page with clear goals to automate and automate for each feature and user story within a sprint. It will also help you keep track of the work’s quality while executing continuous in-sprint test automation.

6. Continuous Testing

It is one of the biggest challenges that we faced during in-sprint test automation. We all know that testing is an ongoing activity in agile projects, which begins even before the development phase. Thus, we need to collaborate with product owners to understand every story in detail and write the right acceptance criteria based on that information to execute smooth sprints.

It creates a significant problem for us, as we have to build test cases for features even before the coding has started. Also, we have to ensure that the new code doesn’t break the feature’s existing functionality.

Overcoming this Challenge: To achieve continuous testing in-sprint test automation , you need to ensure that every story has valid acceptance criteria. Everyone understands the context of the story before starting working on the development. After that, you should start building test cases so that you can begin its testing right away when a feature is available.

Besides, it will help if you talk to developers to provide early visibility to the feature by deploying it to a test environment to execute tests in the early stages.

7. Lack of Technical Expertise

Working with an agile project requires higher technical skills from every team member and stakeholder to help developers with integration testing, API testing, and scripting UI automation checks with Selenium grid or any other tool. But, it is often found that most teams don’t have all the skillset to automate tests. For example, some of my team members came from a manual testing background, so it was difficult for them to understand the automation process and keep up with continuous delivery.

Overcoming this Challenge: Well, the ideal solution for this problem is to hire a well-versed team with automation testing, tools, and techniques. However, if it’s not feasible to hire a new testing team, then prefer training existing team members in automation testing and other automation aspects. Also, make sure the agile project’s functional testers can automate various functions of web applications whenever required.

8. Cross Browser Compatibility

As mentioned earlier, there are various browsers and devices used by visitors to access a website. These web browsers could behave differently for your web application. The front-end of modern web applications is based on JavaScript and CSS, which could render inversely on various browsers and devices. This creates a challenge for testers to ensure their web app’s cross browser compatibility across multiple browsers during sprint automation testing.

Now, executing cross browser testing manually is neither recommended nor viable, as it takes a lot of time and resources. Moreover, it requires creating different test scripts for multiple scenarios, a significant challenge for testers.

Overcoming this Challenge: The ideal approach that can help you execute cross browser testing quickly is using an automation tool like Selenium grid, or you can also opt for LambdaTest, which provides a vast combination of multiple browsers, devices, and operating systems.

9. Incomplete User Stories

During in-sprint test automation, most user stories got stuck somewhere at the end of execution. Even after reaching a stage where you are about to complete the sprint, various things won’t let you finish it. For example, critical issues in a feature that needed fixing, incomplete automation script for regression testing, code review, tests not being added to the test management system, and many more.

Any of these wits makes the user story incomplete at the end of the sprint, so you cannot release or deliver the feature.

Overcoming this Challenge: At first, it seems hard, but it is crucial not to consider such user stories completed. By maintaining discipline in completing user stories, you can achieve in-sprint test automation effectively.

10. Lack of Communication

Communication is the key to the successful test execution of a web app. And if there is a lack of communication between stakeholders, product owners, designers, testers, or developers, then executing in-sprint test automation would never be possible, no matter how good the process is.

Overcoming this Challenge: When you start performing in-sprint automation testing, make sure that there is effective communication between developers, testers, and other project members. To achieve this, you can organize daily stand-up meetings to learn where you are with the agile project and what task the team members will perform today.

11. Selecting the Right Automation Tool/Framework

Without a reliable, secure, and feature-full automation framework, we can never successfully execute in-sprint test automation. This is the biggest challenge for us, as there are plenty of automation frameworks available, and choosing one amongst them is not that simple. We cannot just begin with any automation tool as test automation is a continuous activity for us, not only a once-a-sprint work item.

Overcoming this Challenge: When it comes to selecting the right automation framework, make sure you choose the one that is easy to understand, allow stakeholders to participate in the test automation, allow writing automated tests even without accessing the UI of the application, offer API testing and UI tests for various domains like Web, Mobile, or Native apps.

Technical Challenges With In-Sprint Test Automation

Technical challenges in sprint automation involve the technical skills, tools, and features that are crucial for a successful sprint, such as:

1. Training Automation Engineers

Without training automation engineers in various automation testing processes and tools, it is not feasible to execute in-sprint test automation. For automation engineers, it is crucial to understand all the requirements of test automation, which means they should be skilled in writing the code and executing the tests. Thus, you must provide your automation engineers with additional training to avoid the failure of in-sprint automation.

2. Reporting

During in-sprint test automation, hundreds of test cases are automated. Now, assume if we don’t have a reporting process in place, would we analyze what tests have been executed and what features have been tested?

Most companies often don’t have a reporting process in place during automation testing, which results in doubling the work and resources. So, make sure you have a reporting process in place for analyzing the tasks that have been executed.

3. False Positives and False Negatives

We cannot deny that bugs are always present in code, and we need to rectify the code to eliminate those defects. But, when we receive false positives and false negatives, it becomes a headache for most of us. And this process is prevalent during sprint automation testing. To overcome this problem, we can create a better test plan or use a valuable and useful automation testing tool.

4. Third-party Integration

Third-party integrations are widely used by companies in web applications for additional functionality and flexibility. But, if we configure an automation script to validate those integrations, then there are slight chances of the script facing various errors after a few months or weeks. The reason could be any change/update in the UI of a third-party, or the API process is revamped. Thus, it is crucial to keep track of third-party integrations.

5. Obtaining Scalability in Test Environments

Most QA teams don’t use a cloud platform to execute automation tests, resulting in scalability challenges. Performing tests with on-premises makes it challenging for testers to differentiate between various testing environments, scale them up, and quickly run the tests. Thus, to attain maximum scalability from test environments, prefer moving them to the cloud. It will not only improve the scalability but will also reduce the QA’s team operating costs.

6. Executing Multiple UI Tests Can Break Testing

UI testing is an integral part of sprint automation testing, but we shouldn’t rely too heavily on it. The CSS and XPath locations keep changing in the UI, and if we target these attributes in automated tests, it may lead to false positives, which can increase our work. However, if we implement a strategy that includes both unit-level testing of the API and UI testing, we can attain consistent automation testing.

7. Knowledge Transition Session

It often becomes a more significant obstacle for most organizations when any automation engineer, who is well-versed with all the inbound and outbound web app testing processes, leaves the organization. There should always be a member in-pace who could take the responsibilities of that employee. Therefore, product owners must conduct knowledge transition sessions, either weekly or monthly, to analyze QA Teams’ skills and knowledge.

8. Know Your And Your Colleague’s Skillset

We can implement automation with multiple programming languages and frameworks. It is crucial to have a QA team that is well-versed with all the programming languages and frameworks. For instance, let’s say that you have to assign or debug a C# automation script to your QA team, then it is recommended to assign it to someone who is an expert in C#, rather than asking someone skilled in Python.

Best Practices For Sprint Automation Testing

After knowing the above challenges, it might not seem very easy to implement in-sprint test automation. But don’t worry! If you use the best approach for in-sprint automation testing, then you can achieve it effectively.

The first and the most critical tactic to make your in-sprint automation successful is to check the code in the early stages within a sprint. Also, they should keep deploying new features to the web app as soon as they are coded. It will help testers to write and execute automated test components when they are deployed.
Automation test engineers should work with the development of scrum teams to directly communicate and influence other team members to implement in-sprint automation.
Testers should write small, concise, and descriptive test cases instead of writing long workflows that contain multiple components of a web app. By writing small and defined test cases, it becomes easier to test the functionality of each feature.
Write accurate acceptance criteria for your stories, including the integration of the test suite with CI, sending the results via email, provision of sending the error log files, etc.
Make a test automation backlog that varies from employing a new feature to refining an existing function.
Choose an automation tool/framework that gives you the flexibility to create test cases and provides you various features that you need to execute successful in-sprint test automation
If you already have a framework in place, don’t spend much time evaluating a new tool. However, if the current framework doesn’t meet your goals, create a list of things you want from the new tool and then begin your hunt.
Prioritize the tasks that need to be automated instead of automating everything because not every piece of automation is useful and provides an effective ROI.
Conduct parallel testing to avoid any lags in sprints and make your team more productive and respond to requirements quickly.
Adopt DevOps that can help you promote shared working, development, integration, and testing in real-time.
Try executing the automated tests from a centralized location, where all the team members are independent and comfortable communicating with other members involved in the project.

These are a few practices to follow to implement successful in-sprint test automation.

Final Words

Sprint Automation Testing might not be an easy call, but it’s not impossible. If implemented successfully, it can reduce the time required for deployment and improve its quality while enabling continuous delivery. However, achieving it in the first attempt is not that simple, as various challenges and issues can result in failed in-sprints. This article shared our in-sprint test automation journey and the challenges that we face during the process. By following the proper procedures while addressing the above challenges, any QA team can successfully achieve in-sprint automation.

Happy testing!

JUnit Certification: Evaluate Your Automation Testing Skills

Rahul — Fri, 28 May 2021 07:42:56 +0000

Free JUnit Certification By LambdaTest🎓

With the free #JUnit certification by LambdaTest, you can challenge your skills in performing automated testing with JUnit and take your career to the next level. 💥🚀

What You Need To Know

Know-how about JUnit 4 and JUnit 5.
Use Annotations and Assertions in JUnit.
Implement Automation testing using different Web Locators using Selenium and JUnit.
Run automation tests through different data-driven test mechanisms in JUnit.
Run automation tests through different data-driven test mechanisms in JUnit.
Perform cross browser testing in parallel with JUnit and Selenium.

Exam Details

The Assessment has 2 rounds.
Round 1: 45 MCQs in 45 minutes.
Round 2: Assignment Task (deadline-based).
50% weightage for each round.
70% of the cumulative score is required to be certified.
Price: Free (no credit card required).
The issued certificate will be valid for 2 years.

Grab your free JUnit Certification now : https://bit.ly/3ft3xVx

How To Use GitLab CI To Run Tests Locally?

Rahul — Wed, 12 May 2021 09:09:48 +0000

Taking over from its predecessor, Jenkins, GitLab CI is a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) server. It helps development teams to test code from a centralized location, all while providing built-in integration with Git repositories. In this tutorial, we will be looking at how to use GitLab CI to run tests locally.

What is GitLab CI?

Developers, several times a day, push code updates to the Git repository. You can construct a series of scripts to automatically develop and validate your application with any push to the repository, minimizing the risk of mistakes being added to your software. This is nothing but Continuous Integration; it is automatically and continually designed and reviewed for any change submitted to an application, ensuring that the implemented changes pass all the checks, guidelines, and code enforcement requirements you have set for your software.

An example of using Continuous Integration as a method of software development is GitLab itself. There is a collection of scripts for every push to the project where the code is tested against the push.

Features of GitLab CI that help overcoming the testing challenges discussed above

Multi-platform: Run builds for Unix, Windows, macOS, and every other Go-supported platform.
Multi-language: Command-line has driven Build Scripts to operate with Java, PHP, Ruby, C, and any other language.
Parallel builds: Builds split by GitLab CI/CD are designed for faster execution over multiple machines.
Versioned pipelines: The test scripts and overall process steps are stored in a .gitlab-ci.yml file, allowing everyone to contribute changes and ensuring that every branch gets the pipeline it needs.
Autoscaling: To reduce costs and ensure that your builds are processed instantly, spin up and down VM’s automatically.
Test locally: Several executors are available, and experiments can be replicated locally.
Docker support: There are several ways to integrate Docker. By using custom Docker images, spinning up services as part of testing, building new Docker images, even running on Kubernetes.

How does GitLab CI work?

To use GitLab CI, all you need is an application’s base code hosted in a Git repository, and a file called .gitlab-ci.yml, located in the root path of your repository, must be defined for your build, test, and deployment scripts.

You can define the scripts that you want to run in this file, define the include and cache dependencies, pick commands that you want to run in sequence and those in parallel, and determine if you wish to run the scripts automatically or trigger them manually.

When your .gitlab-ci.yml configuration file has been added to your repository, GitLab can detect it and run your scripts with the GitLab Runner app, which functions just like your terminal and substantially helps us reproduce production-like scenarios.

Local Testing and its Challenges

Although there are varied “Local Testing” concepts that have arisen in recent years, there is only one that developers and testers alike generally embrace. We describe local testing as any test performed on the local machine of a developer and tester. You run the tests locally, whether they be automated or manual, as opposed to externally, i.e., on any hosted server or testing grid, like code development done in the Dev region.

There are advantages to this technique, namely the fact that you can run unit tests efficiently to check the consistency of your code or run manual tests on your app for one-off problems that might occur in development. However, accompanies few challenges to running the tests only locally:

1. Older browser support implies decreased quality.

You may have a few different browsers on your machine, for sure. Chances are, however, that your clients are using browsers that you haven’t downloaded on your local computer. Besides, several individuals might still be using various browser versions to which you do not have access. This likely results in inconsistent results.

2. The same applies to Operating Systems.

All versions of Windows and macOS and their components can not be accounted for by your local machine to ensure that your app runs as intended. A lack of coverage across various combinations of browser / OS means that local-only testing does not guarantee that your software is up to the quality levels anticipated by your users.

3. Still a bottleneck

In an optimistic situation, assume that your local machine is configured to access every browser and operating system accessed by the users. Issue fixed, huh? Not so quickly! Running tests from your local computer, even though you have the coverage, ensures that each of those tests must be performed one at a time, even if they are automated. To delight your customers, you might implement serial testing, but this substantially slows down the speed. And if you work in the CI / CD workflow, you have to wait for your tests to finish before executing the entire build.

4. Challenges in Cloud

Let us say that in a local environment with a reasonably speedy internet connection, the tester is designing and running specific tests, and the tests pass.

Come to Cloud. Now you want to run the tests with the CI framework, which is linked to a test service based on a cloud browser. Cloud-based web testing services will add more complexity for all their ease, as they can be accessed via a business VPN and then depend on the speed and reliability of the test service for the cloud browser. One potential effect of this may be flaky timeout tests due to a latency that has not been applied in the local testing environment.

Overcoming Local Testing Challenges

If there is one thing you can always do, maintain the test suite! In a way, to every bug you patch, add new tests to every new feature.

Running GitLab CI via Docker Locally

Only add your .gitlab-ci.yml file to your project, create a new branch, push it, create a Merge Request, and if you like, the CI will kick in, with several parallel jobs. The CI would not let me fail, even though I forgot to run my tests.

However, keeping a CI up and running allows you to pause and maintain your specs. You will often wonder why a test runs on your local computer, but does the CI server continue to fail?

That is why it is super helpful to run the CI docker image locally, to iron out quirks based on the rest of the world.

And by running the GitLab CI Runner itself, you can do just that. It will pick up the .gitlab-ci.yml of your project and run it via Docker locally. So ultimately, any issue you see on the server will undoubtedly happen locally, ensuring good test coverage locally. There are queues of jobs waiting to run with the added advantage that you don’t need to wait in line in case.

Configuring LambdaTest Tunnel to Test Locally

The Lambda Tunnel allows you to connect your local system with LambdaTest servers via an SSH-based integration Tunnel. Once this Tunnel is established, you can perform local page testing on all 2000+ browser environments present on the platform.

Apologies for throwing a few jargons like Gitlab CI Runner / .gitlab-ci.yml / Docker / Lamba Tunnel ahead of any introduction. But do not worry, the guide is intended to deep dive into several of these strategies to circumvent quirks in running tests locally.

How to Test GitLab CI locally?

To configure GitLab CI locally, it is essential to understand .gitlab-ci.yml file creation.

The .gitlab-ci.yml file that resides in your repository root is where you configure what your project is doing with CI. It specifies the structures of the pipelines and their order and determines:

What to perform using the GitLab Runner.
What decisions to make when particular situations are encountered. For instance, when a process is successful or fails.

Upon any push to your repository, GitLab will scan for a .gitlab-ci.yml file and start jobs on Runner based on the contents of the file.

Because .gitlab-ci.yml is in the repository and is version managed,

Old versions are still successfully installed.
Forks can easily use CI.
Branches can have multiple pipelines and jobs.
For CI, you have a single source of reality.

Creating a simple file for .gitlab-ci.yml

In the root directory of your repository, you must create a file called .gitlab-ci.yml. This is a YAML file, so you need to pay special attention to indentation. Always use tabs, not spaces.

A sample .gitlab-ci.yml for a Ruby on Rails project

For most Ruby applications, this is the easiest possible configuration that will work:

Specify two jobs, RSpec and RuboCop jobs (the names are random), with various commands to execute.
The script commands are executed before each job.

Jobs are the fundamental part of the .gitlab-ci.yml file. It specifies job sets with restrictions as to how and when to run them. The jobs are classified as top-level elements with a name (RSpec and RuboCop in this case) and must always contain a keyword – ‘script.’ Jobs are used to build jobs, which are then chosen and executed by Runners within the Runner’s environment.

Each job must run separately from the other.

Validate .gitlab-ci.yml-ci file

Each GitLab CI / CD instance has an embedded debug tool that validates the content of your .gitlab-ci.yml files, called the CI Lint tool. Under the ci/lint page in your project namespace, you will find the Lint. HTTPs:/gitlab.example.com/gitlab-org/project-123/-/ci/lint, for example.

For a graphical representation of your .gitlab-ci.yml file, you can use the CI/CD configuration visualization. For more detail and the full .gitlab-ci.yml syntax, please read the reference documentation on .gitlab-ci.yml.

Let’s say you have a .gitlab-ci.yml file, and you want to test this file locally.

Gitlab Runner is the tool to accomplish this! It is an application that works to run jobs in a pipeline with GitLab CI / CD.

Installation:

Install GitLab Runner on the infrastructure you own or control but just make sure that it is installed on a different machine from the one that hosts an instance of GitLab.

GitLab Runner installation is supported by various OS. The following table identifies supporting compatibilities and installation links.

See some best practices on how the GitLab Runner should be used and administered.

Also, we should make sure GitLab Runner should be the same version as GitLab.

Registration:

You need to register individual Runners after installation. When you do so, you establish a communication between your Gitlab instance and the machine which has Runner installed.

Typically, Runners process jobs on the same machine where you installed GitLab Runner. However, you may also have a Runner process job in a container, in a Kubernetes cluster, or in auto-scaled instances in the cloud.

Depending on which OS/platform/binaries Runner is installed, you can refer to the Runner registration guide for registration steps.

Executors:

An Executor decides the environment each job runs in. When a Runner is registered, you must select an executor.

Several Executors supported by Gitlab Runner:

The table below shows the main facts that will help you determine which executor to use with each executor.

Using Vagrant
Dependent on what kind of environment you are provisioning. It can be completely isolated or shared between each build.
When access to a Runner file system is not secured, jobs can access the entire system, including the Runner token, cache, and code. Executors marked with ‘✓’ do not allow Runner by default to access the file system.

Features supported by different Executors:

Of all the choices mentioned above, below could be best opted.

You could install GitLab Runner on a Windows server and then register a Runner that uses the shell executor if you want your CI / CD job to run PowerShell commands.
You could install GitLab Runner on a Linux server and register a Runner that uses the Docker executor if you want your CI / CD job to run commands in a custom Docker container. It is often referred to as a “Docker-in-Docker” configuration when installing GitLab Runner in a Docker container and selecting the Docker executor to run your tasks. We would see a couple of implementations of testing locally using different GitLab Runner & executors in the subsequent section.
You can install GitLab Runner on a virtual machine and have another virtual machine used as an executor.

GitLab Runner commands

Below are the set commands used to build, test, register, etc., you would see by giving ‘gitlab-Runner’ without any argument.

The ‘exec’ command is our apple of the eye!

‘ gitlab-Runner exec ’ command is the command that easily lets you test builds locally.

It allows the jobs specified in .gitlab-ci.yml to run locally! This, in turn, allows for quicker test cycles and makes it easier for broken builds to be patched.

The way it works is, it aims to reproduce the CI Environment as similar as possible to the way it should function. Instead of connecting to GitLab instance, it reads the local .gitlab-ci.yml file and creates a new environment where all the build steps are executed.

Since gitlab-Runner exec clones the current state of the local Git repository, be sure to have committed any changes you want to test beforehand.

The exec command should be executed directly from the root directory because .gitlab-ci.yml is present there. And while executing it, you must specify the executor and the name of the job.

The following instruction, for example, executes a job called ‘test’ locally using a shell executor.

‘gitlab-Runner exec shell tests’

Let us now try to use all the above information to test a change locally!

Testing Using Docker as an Executor

In order to use Docker, follow the below-mentioned steps:

Install Bleeding Edge Runner release locally.
Run the build: ‘gitlab-Runner exec docker my-local-job.’ ( the job name is arbitrary*)

This will run ‘my-local-job’ defined in the docker container specified in the local .gitlab-ci.yml file.

Note: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/README.html : Even though job names are arbitrary, there are specific keywords listed in this link that you cannot use as job names. An excellent link that extensively contains keywords, syntax, and usage.

Using exec with Docker

Install a docker-machine.
Create a new docker VM: ‘ docker-machine create -d virtualbox Runner.’
Configure shell settings : eval $(docker-machine env Runner).

For best practices on Docker as an executor, go through the document on GitLab Runner with Docker.

Using Shell as an executor on MacOSX:

Install gitlab-Runner via brew.
Register the gitlab-Runner by URL and token in Setup a specific Runner manually section in Project Settings > CI / CD.
Now we must enter the executor type. In this case, it’s Shell.
Execute the ‘gitlab-Runner register’ command on the Shell. A wizard opens when this command runs on the shell. Anything written about the project, such as a description, will be shown in Project Settings > CI / CD > Runners tab.
Assume to have a .gitlab-ci.yml file with two stages – Test & Deploy.

Executing the ‘ gitlab-Runner exec shell my_project_test ’ will run the job ‘ my_project_test ’ under stage ‘test’ locally.

Basically, in both cases, the gitlab-Runner exec command clones the project from the Gitlab repository, installs all related dependencies, and runs the tests locally!!

This was all about introducing GitLab CI to run tests locally and overcome significant challenges of testing locally otherwise.

Test GitLab CI locally Using LambdaTest Tunnel

The LambdaTest GitLab Integration allows you to create a card directly in your repository from the LambdaTest platform.

LambdaTest Tunnel App can be used to execute local tests efficiently. This is a confidence booster before deploying any UI change into production because it lets you test your development thoroughly with the Secure Shell(SSH) network protocol hosted by Lambda Tunnel. Experience the flexibility to securely test your website on 2000+ browsers and their assorted versions, running on real OS code for cross-platform and cross browser compatibility, even before it gets deployed over the production environment. Before any configurations, download LambdaTunnel for your OS using,

The below .gitlab-ci.yml file would show you how to leverage LambdaTest’s cloud Selenium Grid by performing a browser test through your testing server contained in your GitLab CI build.

// Example of .gitlab-ci.yml for Lambda Tunnel

image: node:7.10

before_script:
  - |
    cd /builds/qarachit/protractor-selenium-sample-gitlab
    wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/lambda-tunnel/LT_Linux.zip
    #Extracting tunnel binary
    sudo apt-get install unzip
    unzip LT_Linux.zip
    #Executing tunnel library
    ./LT -user ${LAMBDATEST_EMAIL} -key ${LAMBDATEST_KEY} &
    sleep 30
    #Installing Dependencies
    echo 'export LT_USERNAME="{your_lambdatest_username}"' >> ~/.bashrc
    echo 'export LT_ACCESS_KEY="{your_lambda_access_key}"' >> ~/.bashrc
    npm install
    npm install -g protractor

job:
  script:
    #Running Test!
    protractor single.conf.js

Once the tunnel is successfully set up, you can start testing in your network by adding the below code.
"desiredCapabilities": 
{ "tunnel":true }

While you get Lambda Tunnel configured on your suitable machine, if you are working in a team, you could also configure Tunnel to be operated in shared mode!

This removes any overheads arising in shuffling their SSH Tunnel connection across team members to enable access across the team. Maybe a case where a team has, say, seven members, and everyone configured their Tunnel.

Now, a user can only work on a user-specific SSH Tunnel connection. In case you wish to keep a common SSH Tunnel connection across all your teammates, you will need to establish a shared Lambda Tunnel that would work for all of the teammates listed under your organization at LambdaTest.

Conclusion

Kudos!! You now know how to perform local testing by running GitLab CI via Docker successfully. Getting GitLab CI at work or UI-based application using Lambdatest Tunnel is just to ensure how we could integrate spears to execute tests locally, giving us enough confidence as we face production deployment!

If you want to build an automated testing pipeline with GitLab CI/CD & Selenium Grid, LambdaTest can help you do that as well.

Happy Implementations!

A Comprehensive Guide To JavaScript Design Patterns

Rahul — Tue, 11 May 2021 08:24:16 +0000

Design Pattern is a widely acknowledged concept in the software engineering industry in terms of the benefits it brings to areas of code-reuse and maintainability. As a software developer, you likely stumble upon this term at one point. Unsurprisingly, without even knowing it, the chances are that you might have already implemented them somewhere in the development journey.

A design pattern is used to identify reusable solutions that can be applied to recurring problems that software developers commonly face during software design. They represent time-tested solutions and best practices adopted by object-oriented software developers over time.

This blog will be your guide to everything you need to know about popular JavaScript design patterns. The only prerequisite is that you should have basic knowledge of JavaScript and Object-Oriented Programming concepts.

Starting with the historical perspective, we will do an in-depth exploration of various common JavaScript design patterns from an object-oriented view. By the end, you will be accustomed to various JavaScript design patterns along with a basic idea of their implementation.

Let’s get started!

History of Design Pattern

Since its inception, the concept of design pattern has been around in the programming world. But it was not formalized till 1994 when one of the most influential work was published called “Design Patterns: Elements Of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” – written by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides – a group that became known as the Gang of Four (or GoF).

In this book, 23 object-oriented design patterns are featured. Since then, the “pattern approach” became popular in the software engineering industry, and after that, dozens of other patterns have been discovered.

What is a Design Pattern?

Design patterns can be considered pre-made blueprint applied to solve a particular design problem. It is not a finished piece of code that can be directly applied to your program. But rather, it is more like a template or description that can give you an idea of approaching a problem and inspiring solutions. Hence, the code for the two separate programming scenarios, implementing the same pattern can be different.

Now, if you are wondering how a pattern gets discovered, it’s simple. When the same solution gets repeated over and over, someone will eventually recognize it, put a name to it, and then describe the solution in detail. That’s how a pattern gets discovered. Definitely, they were not forged overnight.

A design pattern is often confused with algorithms.

Structure of a Design Pattern

As mentioned in the above section, the author of a design pattern provides documentation. Even though there is no strict agreement among the pattern community regarding the documentation template structure, the following are the sections that are usually present.

Some other sections are Applicability, Collaborations, Consequences, etc.

Why Patterns?

As previously mentioned, we already use patterns every day. They help us solve recurring design problems. But is it necessary to spend time learning them? Let’s look into a few key benefits that design patterns grant us.

1. Avoid reinventing the wheel:

Most of the frequently faced design problems already have a well-defined solution that is associated with a pattern. Patterns are proven solutions that can speed up development.

2. Codebase Maintenance:

Patterns help in implementing DRY(Do not Repeat Yourself) – the concept which helps to prevent your codebase from growing large and unwieldy.

3. Easily reused:

Reusing patterns assists in preventing minor subtle issues that can cause major problems in the application development process. This also improves code readability for coders and architects familiar with the patterns.

4. Enables efficient communication:

Patterns add to a developer’s vocabulary. This allows developers to communicate using well-known, well-understood names for software interactions, making communication faster.

5. Improve your object-oriented skills:

Now even if you never encounter any of these problems, learning patterns can give you insights into various approaches to solving problems using object-oriented principles.

Criticism of Patterns

Over time design patterns have also received a fair share of criticism. Let’s peek into the popular arguments against patterns.

1. Increases Complexity:

Inappropriate use of patterns creates undesired complexity. This is a problem suffered by many novices, who try to apply the pattern wherever they can think of, even in situations where simpler code would do just fine.

2. Reduced Relevance:

In “Design Patterns in Dynamic Languages,” Peter Norvig points out that over half of the design patterns in the 1994 book (written by GoF) are workarounds for missing language features. In many cases, patterns just become kludges that gave the programming language the much-needed super-abilities it lacked then.

As the language features, frameworks, and libraries evolved, there is no reason to use a few patterns anymore.

3. Lazy Design:

As suggested by Paul Graham in “Revenge of the Nerds” (2002), patterns are a form of lazy design, when the developer is not focused on the problem requirement at hand. Instead of creating a new and appropriate design for the problem, they might just reuse the existing design patterns because they think they should.

So far, we have seen what design patterns are and also discussed their advantages and disadvantages. Now it’s time for in-depth exploration of various types of JS design patterns available.

Note: In the upcoming sessions, we will explore object-oriented JavaScript implementations of both classical and modern design patterns. It is to be noted that a few of the classic design patterns mentioned in the GoF book have reduced relevance over time. Hence they will be omitted, and modern patterns from sources like Addy Osmani’s Learn JavaScript Design Patterns will be included.

JavaScript Design Patterns

JavaScript is one of the most in-demand programming languages for web development today. As we will be concentrating on JavaScript design patterns in this article, let’s just have a quick recap of essential JavaScript features that will aid in smoother understanding.

a) Flexible with programming styles

JavaScript has support for procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming styles.

b) Supports First-class Functions

This means functions can be passed as arguments to other functions just like a variable.

c) Prototype-based Inheritance

Though JavaScript supports objects, unlike other OOPs languages, JavaScript doesn’t have the concept of class or class-based inheritance in its basic form. Instead, it uses something called prototype-based or instance-based inheritance.

Note: In ES6, even though the keyword “class” is introduced, it still utilizes prototype-based inheritance in the hood.

To know more about defining “class” using JavaScript, do check out this useful post by Stoyan Stefanov on three ways to define a JavaScript class.

Categories of Design Pattern

Based on intent, the JavaScript design pattern can be categorized into 3 major groups:

a) Creational Design Pattern

These patterns focus on handling object creation mechanisms. A basic object creation approach in a program can lead to an added complexity. Creational JS design patterns aim to solve this problem by controlling the creation process.

Few patterns that fall under this category are – Constructor, Factory, Prototype, Singleton, etc.

b) Structural Design Patterns

These patterns are concerned with object composition. They explain simple ways to assemble objects and classes into larger structures. They help ensure that when one part of a system changes, the entire structure of the system doesn’t need to do the same, keeping them flexible and efficient.

Few patterns that fall under this category are – Module, Decorator, Facade, Adapter, Proxy, etc.

c) Behavioral Design Patterns

These patterns focus on improving the communication and assignment of responsibilities between dissimilar objects in a system.

Few patterns that fall under this category are – Chain of Responsibility, Command, Observer, Iterator, Strategy, Template, etc.

With this understanding of the categorization, let’s examine each JavaScript design pattern.

Creational Design Patterns

1. Constructor Pattern

The constructor pattern is one of the most simple, popular, and modern JS design patterns. As suggested by the name, the purpose of this pattern is to aid constructor creation.

In Addy’s words-

“A constructor is a special method used to initialize a newly created object once the memory has been allocated for it. In JavaScript, as almost everything is an object, we’re most often interested in object constructors.”

Example:

In the below code, we have defined a function/class Person with attributes name and age. The getDetails() method will print the name and age of the person in the format –

“Name is age years old!”

The syntax is given in 2 formats – (a) traditional function-based syntax and (b) EC6 class syntax.

Then, we instantiate an object for the class Person by invoking the constructor method using the new keyword and passing respective attribute values.

//  a) Traditional "function" based syntax

function Person(name,age) {
        this.name = name;
        this.age = age;
        this.getDetails = function () {
            console.log(`${this.name} is ${this.age} years old!`);

    }
}

//  b) ES6 "class" syntax

class Person {
    constructor(name, age) {
        this.name = name;
        this.age = age;
        this.getDetails = function () {
            console.log(`${this.name} is ${this.age} years old!`);
        };
    }
}

//Creating new instance of Person
const personOne = new Person('John',20);
personOne.getDetails(); // Output - “John is 20years old!”

2. Factory Pattern

The Factory pattern is another creational pattern concerned with creating objects but using some sort of generic interface. According to GoF’s book, this pattern has the following responsibility.

“Define an interface for creating an object, but let subclasses decide which class to instantiate.”

This pattern is typically used when we need to handle object groups that share similar characters yet are different through appropriate custom calls. An example would bring more clarity.

Note: Though the definition particularly mentions that an interface needs to be defined, we don’t have interfaces in JavaScript. Therefore, we are going to implement it using an alternative way.

Example:

Here, the shapeFactory constructor is responsible for creating new objects of the constructors’ Rectangle, Square, and Circle. The createShape() inside shapeFactory takes in parameters, depending on which it delegates the responsibility of object instantiation to the respective class.

//Factory method for creating new shape instances
function shapeFactory(){
    this.createShape = function (shapeType) {

        var shape;
        switch(shapeType){
            case "rectangle":
                shape = new Rectangle();
                break;
            case "square":
                shape = new Square();
                break;
            case "circle":
                shape = new Circle();
                break;    
            default:
                shape = new Rectangle();
                break;
        }
        return shape;
    }
}

// Constructor for defining new Rectangle
var Rectangle = function () {
    this.draw = function () {
        console.log('This is a Rectangle');
    }
};

// Constructor for defining new Square
var Square = function () {
    this.draw = function () {
        console.log('This is a Square');
    }
};

// Constructor for defining new Circle
var Circle= function () {
    this.draw = function () {
        console.log('This is a Circle);
    }
};

var factory = new shapeFactory();
//Creating instance of factory that makes rectangle,square,circle respectively
var rectangle = factory.createShape('rectangle');
var square = factory.createShape('square');
var circle= factory.createShape('circle');

rectangle.draw();
square.draw();
circle.draw();

/*
  OUTPUT

  This is a Rectangle
  This is a Square
  This is a Circle

*/

3. Prototype Pattern

An object that supports cloning is called a prototype. Using the prototype pattern, we can instantiate new objects based on a template of an existing object through cloning.

As the prototype pattern is based on prototypal inheritance, we can utilize the native prototypical strengths of JavaScript. In the previous JS design patterns, we were trying to imitate features of other languages in JavaScript, which is not the case here.

Example:

Here we have a prototype class car, which is cloned to create a new object myCar using Object.create feature defined by ES5 standard.

// Prototype Class
const car = {
    noOfWheels: 4,
    start() {
      return 'started';
    },
    stop() {
      return 'stopped';
    },
  };


//using Object.create to create clones - as recommended by ES5 standard
  const myCar = Object.create(car, { owner: { value: 'John' } });

  console.log(myCar.__proto__ === car); // true

4. Singleton Pattern

The singleton pattern is a creational JavaScript design pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to a single object. It creates a new instance of the class if one doesn’t exist and if existing already, it simply returns a reference to it. It is also known as the Strict Pattern.

A singleton pattern solves two problems at the same time, violating the Single Responsibility Principle.

Guarantees that there is only a single instance of a class.
Provide a global access point to this instance.

A practical example would be a single database object shared by different parts of the program. There is no need to create a new instance of a database when one is already existing.

One drawback of the pattern is the difficulty associated with testing. There are hidden dependencies objects, which are difficult to single out to test.

Example:

//Singleton class
var Singleton = (function () {
    var instance;

    function createDBInstance() {
        var object = new Object("I am the DataBase instance");
        return object;
    }

    return {
        getDBInstance: function () {
            if (!instance) {
                instance = createDBInstance();
            }
            return instance;
        }
    };
})();

function run() {

    var instance1 = Singleton.getDBInstance();
    var instance2 = Singleton.getDBInstance();

    console.log("Same instance? " + (instance1 === instance2));  
}

run(); // OUTPUT = "Same instance? true"

Structural Design Patterns

1. Adapter Pattern

The adapter is a structural JS design pattern that allows objects or classes with incompatible interfaces to collaborate. It matches interfaces of different classes or objects; therefore, they can work together despite incompatible interfaces. It is also referred to as the Wrapper pattern.

A real-world analogy would be trying to connect a projector to a laptop. The projector might have a VGA plug, and the laptop might have an HDMI plug. So we require an adapter that can make these two unrelated interfaces compatible.

This pattern will include a class that will be responsible for joining the incompatible interfaces/functionalities.

Example:

The below code shows an online flight ticket pricing calculation system. There is an old interface that performs pricing calculations in one way. There is a new, improved interface with additional features like user identification and improvised calculations.

An adapter class is introduced, which allows the client program to continue working without any API changes by matching the old interface with the new one.

// old interface
function TicketPrice() {
    this.request = function(start, end, overweightLuggage) {
        // price calculation code...
        return "$150.34";
    }
}

// new interface
function NewTicketPrice() {
    this.login = function(credentials) { /* process credentials */ };
    this.setStart = function(start) { /* set start point */ };
    this.setDestination = function(destination) { /* set destination */ };
    this.calculate = function(overweightLuggage) { 
        //price calculation code...
        return "$120.20"; 
    };
}

// adapter interface
function TicketAdapter(credentials) {
    var pricing = new NewTicketPrice();

    pricing.login(credentials);

    return {
        request: function(start, end, overweightLuggage) {
            pricing.setStart(start);
            pricing.setDestination(end);
            return pricing.calculate(overweightLuggage);
        }
    };
}

var pricing = new TicketPrice();
var credentials = { token: "30a8-6ee1" };
var adapter = new TicketAdapter(credentials);

// original ticket pricing and interface
var price = pricing.request("Bern", "London", 20);
console.log("Old price: " + price);

// new ticket pricing with adapted interface
price = adapter.request("Bern", "London", 20);
console.log("New price: " + price);

2. Composite Pattern

Composite is a structural JavaScript design pattern that lets you compose objects into tree structures and then work with these structures as if they were individual objects. According to GoF’s book, this pattern composes objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies. It is also known as a partitioning JS design pattern.

The perfect example of this pattern would be tree control. The nodes of the tree either contain an individual object (leaf node) or a group of objects (a subtree of nodes).

Modern JS frameworks like React and Vue use the composite pattern to build user interfaces. The entire view is divided into components. Each component can contain multiple components. This method is preferred because of the ease of development and scalability compared to fewer monolithic objects. The composite pattern reduces the complexity of a system by allowing you to work with small objects and build them up into larger ones.

Example:

A file-folder(directory) structure is explained in the below code. Here a directory can have two types of entities, a file or another directory, which can contain files or directories and so on.

We have two classes – File and Directory. We can add or remove files in the Directory and also getFileName, and the display will list all file names inside the directory.

function File(name) {
    this.name = name;
}

File.prototype.display = function () {
    console.log(this.name);
}

function Directory(name) {
    this.name = name;
    this.files = [];
}

Directory.prototype.add = function (file) {
    this.files.push(file);
}

Directory.prototype.remove = function (file) {
    for (let i = 0, length = this.files.length; i < length; i++) {
        if (this.files[i] === file) {
            this.files.splice(i, 1);
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

Directory.prototype.getFileName = function (index) {
    return this.files[index].name;
}

Directory.prototype.display = function() {
    console.log(this.name);
    for (let i = 0, length = this.files.length; i < length; i++) {
        console.log("   ", this.getFileName(i));
    }
}

directoryOne = new Directory('Directory One');
directoryTwo = new Directory('Directory Two');
directoryThree = new Directory('Directory Three');

fileOne = new File('File One');
fileTwo = new File('File Two');
fileThree = new File('File Three');

directoryOne.add(fileOne);
directoryOne.add(fileTwo);

directoryTwo.add(fileOne);

directoryThree.add(fileOne);
directoryThree.add(fileTwo);
directoryThree.add(fileThree);

directoryOne.display();
directoryTwo.display();
directoryThree.display();

/*
Directory One
    File One
    File Two
Directory Two
    File One
Directory Three
    File One
    File Two
    File Three
*/

3. Module Pattern

Module Pattern is another prevalent JavaScript design pattern for keeping our code clean, separated, and organized. A module is a piece of self-contained code that can be updated without affecting other components. As the concept of access modifier is not supported in JavaScript, the modules help in mimicking the behavior of private/public access hence providing encapsulation.

The typical code structure will be like this:

(function() {

    // declare private variables and/or functions

    return {
    // declare public variables and/or functions
    }

})();

Example:

Here we have the flexibility of renaming like we have renamed addAnimal to add. A point to be noted is that we can’t invoke removeAnimal from an outside environment as it is dependent on the private property container.

function AnimalContainter () {
    //private variables and/or functions
    const container = [];

    function addAnimal (name) {
    container.push(name);
    }

    function getAllAnimals() {
    return container;
    }

    function removeAnimal(name) {
    const index = container.indexOf(name);
    if(index < 1) {
    throw new Error('Animal not found in container');
    }
    container.splice(index, 1)
    }

    return {
    public variables and/or functions
    add: addAnimal,
    get: getAllAnimals,
    remove: removeAnimal
    }
    }

    const container = AnimalContainter();
    container.add('Hen');
    container.add('Goat');
    container.add('Sheep');

    console.log(container.get()) //Array(3) ["Hen", "Goat", "Sheep"]
    container.remove('Sheep')
    console.log(container.get()); //Array(2) ["Hen", "Goat"]

4. Decorator Pattern

Decorators are a structural JS design pattern that aims to promote code reuse. This pattern allows behavior to be added to an individual object dynamically, without affecting the behavior of other objects from the same class. Decorators can also provide a flexible alternative to subclassing for extending functionality.

Since JavaScript allows us to add methods and properties to objects dynamically, implementing this JavaScript pattern is a very straight-forward process. Do check out Addy Osmani’s post to know more about Decorators.

Example:

Let’s take a look at the simple implementation.

// A vehicle constructor
function Vehicle( vehicleType ){

    // some sane defaults
    this.vehicleType = vehicleType || "car";
    this.model = "default";
    this.license = "00000-000";

}

// Test instance for a basic vehicle
var testInstance = new Vehicle( "car" );
console.log( testInstance );

// Outputs:
// vehicle: car, model:default, license: 00000-000

// Lets create a new instance of vehicle, to be decorated
var truck = new Vehicle( "truck" );

// New functionality we're decorating vehicle with
truck.setModel = function( modelName ){
    this.model = modelName;
};

truck.setColor = function( color ){
    this.color = color;
};

// Test the value setters and value assignment works correctly
truck.setModel( "CAT" );
truck.setColor( "blue" );

console.log( truck );

// Outputs:
// vehicle:truck, model:CAT, color: blue

// Demonstrate "vehicle" is still unaltered
var secondInstance = new Vehicle( "car" );
console.log( secondInstance );

// Outputs:
// vehicle: car, model:default, license: 00000-000

5. Facade Pattern

The facade pattern consists of a facade, which is an object that acts as a “front-face” for a much complex structural code. Developers normally use this pattern when a system is very complex or difficult to understand to provide a simpler interface to the client. This helps to create an abstraction layer between what is shown publicly and what is implemented behind the curtain.

Example:

Here Mortgage is a facade for Bank, Credit, and Background.

var Mortgage = function(name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    Mortgage.prototype = {

        applyFor: function(amount) {
            // access multiple subsystems...
            var result = "approved";
            if (!new Bank().verify(this.name, amount)) {
                result = "denied";
            } else if (!new Credit().get(this.name)) {
                result = "denied";
            } else if (!new Background().check(this.name)) {
                result = "denied";
            }
            return this.name + " has been " + result +
                   " for a " + amount + " mortgage";
        }
    }

    var Bank = function() {
        this.verify = function(name, amount) {
            // complex logic ...
            return true;
        }
    }

    var Credit = function() {
        this.get = function(name) {
            // complex logic ...
            return true;
        }
    }

    var Background = function() {
        this.check = function(name) {
            // complex logic ...
            return true;
        }
    }

    function run() {
        var mortgage = new Mortgage("Joan Templeton");
        var result = mortgage.applyFor("$100,000");

        alert(result);
    }

6. Proxy Pattern

As the name suggests, the Proxy Pattern provides a surrogate or placeholder for another object to control access, reduce cost, and reduce complexity. The proxy could interface to anything – a network connection, a large object in memory, a file, or some other resource that is expensive or impossible to duplicate.

Here, we will create a proxy object that ‘stands in’ for the original object. The proxy interface will be the same as that of the original object so that the client may not even be aware they are dealing with a proxy rather than the real object. In the proxy, extra functionality can be provided, for example, caching, checking some preconditions, etc.

There are three common situations in which the Proxy pattern is applicable.

A virtual proxy is a placeholder for expensive to create or resource-intensive objects.
A remote proxy controls access to the remote object.
A protective proxy controls access rights to a sensitive master object. The caller’s access permissions are checked prior to forwarding the request.

Example:

The following code will aid you in getting a gist of Proxy implementation. We have an external API FlightListAPI for accessing Flight Details databases. We will create a proxy FlightListProxy which will act as the interface through which the client can access the API.

/*  External API*/
var FlightListAPI = function() {
//creation
};

FlightListAPI.prototype = {
getFlight: function() {
    // get master list of flights
    console.log('Generating flight List');
},

searchFlight: function(flightDetails) {
    // search through the flight list based on criteria
    console.log('Searching for flight');
},

addFlight: function(flightData) {
    // add a new flight to the database
    console.log('Adding new flight to DB');
}
};

// creating the proxy
var FlightListProxy = function() {
    // getting a reference to the original object
this.flightList = new FlightListAPI();
};

FlightListProxy.prototype = {
getFlight: function() {
    return this.flightList.getFlight();
},

searchFlight: function(flightDetails) {
    return this.flightList.searchFlight(flightDetails);
},

addFlight: function(flightData) {
    return this.flightList.addFlight(flightData);
},

};

console.log("----------With Proxy----------")
const proxy = new FlightListProxy()
console.log(proxy.getFlight());
/*

OUTPUT

----------With Proxy----------
Generating flight List


*/

Behavioural Design Pattern

1. Chain of Responsibility Pattern

This is a behavioral JavaScript design pattern that creates a chain of receiver objects for a request. This pattern promotes loose coupling. We can avoid coupling the sender of a request to a receiver, and more than one receiver can handle the request.

The receiving objects will be linked together, and they can choose to act on the request and/or pass it to the next receiver object. It is also easy to add new receiver objects to the chain.

Event Handling in DOM is one implementation of the Chain of Responsibility pattern.

Once an event is fired, it propagates through the DOM hierarchy, calling every event handler it runs into until it finds the appropriate “event listener” and then acts on it.

Example:

Let us consider the scenario of an ATM. When we request an amount for withdrawal, the machine processes the request and dispends the amount as combinations of available note denominations ($100, $50, $20, $10, $5, $1).

In this code on requesting an amount, a Request object is created. This object then invokes a series of get calls, which are chained together, each one handling a particular denomination. Finally, the user receives the amount as a note combination which satisfies the amount value.

var Request = function(amount) {
    this.amount = amount;
    console.log("Request Amount:" +this.amount);
}

Request.prototype = {
    get: function(bill) {
        var count = Math.floor(this.amount / bill);
        this.amount -= count * bill;
        console.log("Dispense " + count + " $" + bill + " bills");
        return this;
    }
}

function run() {
    var request = new Request(378); //Requesting amount
    request.get(100).get(50).get(20).get(10).get(5).get(1);
}

2. Command Pattern

Command Pattern is a behavioral JS design pattern that aims to encapsulate actions or operations as objects. This pattern is useful in scenarios where we want to decouple or split the objects executing the commands from objects issuing the commands. Command objects allow you to centralize the processing of these actions/operations.

The four participants involved in the command pattern are command, receiver, invoker, and client.

Command – A command object knows about the receiver and invokes a method of the receiver. Values for parameters of the receiver method are stored in the command.
Client – The client’s responsibility is to create the command object and pass it to the invoker.
Invoker – The invoker receives the command object from the client, and it’s only responsibility is to call (or invoke) a command.
Receiver – Then, the receiver receives the command and looks for a method to call based on the received command.

Example:

In our example, the calculator object contains four methods – add, subtract, divide, and multiply. Command objects define a method execute, which has the responsibility of invoking a method.

var calculator = {
    add: function(x, y) {
        return x + y;
    },
    subtract: function(x, y) {
        return x - y;
    },
    divide: function(x,y){
        return x/y;
    },
    multiply: function (x,y){
        return x*y;
    }
}
var manager = {
    execute: function(name, args) {
        if (name in calculator) {
            return calculator[name].apply(calculator, [].slice.call(arguments, 1));
        }
        return false;
    }
}
console.log(manager.execute("add", 5, 2)); // prints 7
console.log(manager.execute("multiply", 2, 4)); // prints 8

3. Observer Pattern

The Observer is a behavioral JS design pattern that lets you define a subscription mechanism to notify multiple objects (observers) about any events that happen to the object (subject) they’re observing. This pattern is also called Pub/Sub, short for Publication/Subscription. It defines a one-to-many dependency between objects, promotes loose coupling, and facilitates good object-oriented design.

The observer pattern is the foundation of event-driven programming. We write event handler functions that will be notified when a certain event fires.

Example:

We have set up a Subject function Click and extended it using the prototype. We have created methods to subscribe and unsubscribe objects to the Observer collection, which is handled by the clickHandler function. Also, there is a fire method to propagate any changes in the Subject class object to the subscribed Observers.

function Click() {
    this.observers = [];  // observers
}

Click.prototype = {

    subscribe: function(fn) {
        this.observers.push(fn);
    },

    unsubscribe: function(fn) {
        this.observers = this.observers.filter(
            function(item) {
                if (item !== fn) {
                    return item;
                }
            }
        );
    },

    fire: function(o, thisObj) {
        var scope = thisObj;
        this.observers.forEach(function(item) {
            item.call(scope, o);
        });
    }
}

function run() {

    var clickHandler = function(item) { 
        console.log("Fired:" +item);
    };

    var click = new Click();

    click.subscribe(clickHandler);
    click.fire('event #1');
    click.unsubscribe(clickHandler);
    click.fire('event #2');
    click.subscribe(clickHandler);
    click.fire('event #3');

}

/* OUTPUT:

Fired:event #1
Fired:event #3

*/

4. Iterator Pattern

The Iterator Pattern lets you access and traverses through elements of an aggregate object (collection) sequentially without exposing its underlying representation. This pattern allows JavaScript developers to design looping constructs that are far more flexible and sophisticated. In ES6, Iterator and Generators are introduced, which further aids in the Iteration pattern implementation.

Example:

This is a simple straight-forward code for front-to-back iteration. We have defined two methods for the Iterator – hasNext() and next().

const items = [1,"hello",false,99.8];

function Iterator(items){
  this.items = items;
  this.index = 0; // to start from beginning position of array
}

Iterator.prototype = {
  // returns true if a next element is available
  hasNext: function(){
    return this.index < this.items.length;
  },
  //returns next element
  next: function(){
    return this.items[this.index++]
  }
}

//Instantiate object for Iterator
const iterator =  new Iterator(items);
while(iterator.hasNext()){
  console.log(iterator.next());
}
/*
OUTPUT

1
hello
false
99.8

*/

5. Template Pattern

The template pattern defines the skeleton of an algorithm in operation in terms of some high-level steps. These steps are themselves implemented by additional helper methods in the same class as the template method. The objects that implement these steps retain the original structure of the algorithm but have the option to redefine or adjust certain steps.

Example:

Here we have an abstract class datastore that offers an interface to implement the template method by defining primitive steps for an algorithm. And we have a concrete MySQL class, which implements the primitive steps defined in the abstract class.

 // implement template method

var datastore = {
    process: function() {
        this.connect();
        this.select();
        this.disconnect();
        return true;
    }
};

function inherit(proto) {
    var F = function() { };
    F.prototype = proto;
    return new F();
}


function run() {
    var mySql = inherit(datastore);

    // implement template steps

    mySql.connect = function() {
        console.log("MySQL: connect step");
    };

    mySql.select = function() {
        console.log("MySQL: select step");
    };

    mySql.disconnect = function() {
        console.log("MySQL: disconnect step");
    };

    mySql.process();

}

run();
/* 

MySQL: connect step
MySQL: select step
MySQL: disconnect step

*/

6. Strategy Pattern

Strategy Patterns allows one of a family of algorithms to be selected on-the-fly at runtime. The pattern defines a family of algorithms, encapsulates each one, and makes them interchangeable at run-time without client interference.

Example:

We have created a class Shipping which encapsulates all possible strategies for shipping a parcel – FedEx, UPS, and USPS. Using this pattern, we can swap the strategy during runtime and generate appropriate output.

//Strategy1 
function FedEx(){
  this.calculate = package => {
    //calculations  happen here..
    return 2.99
  }
}

//Strategy2
function UPS(){
  this.calculate = package => {
    //calculations  happen here..
    return 1.59
  }
}

//Strategy3
function USPS(){
  this.calculate = package => {
    //calculations  happen here..
    return 4.5
  }
}

// encapsulation
function Shipping(){
  this.company = "";
  this.setStrategy = (company) => {
    this.company=company;
  }
  this.calculate = (package) =>{
    return this.company.calculate(package);
  }
}

//usage
const fedex = new FedEx();
const ups = new UPS();
const usps = new USPS();

const package = { from: 'Alabama',to:'Georgia',weight:1.5};

const shipping = new Shipping();
shipping.setStrategy(fedex);
console.log("Fedex:" +shipping.calculate(package)); // OUTPUT => "Fedex:2.99"

Anti-Patterns

While it’s important to know about design patterns, it is equally important to know about Anti-Patterns. If a design pattern can be considered as a best practice, an anti-pattern represents just the opposite.

The term anti-pattern was coined in 1995 by Andrew Koenig. According to Koenig, an anti-pattern is a bad solution to a particular problem that resulted in a bad situation.

Few examples of anti-patterns in JavaScript are the following:

Polluting the global namespace by defining a large number of variables in the global context
Passing strings rather than functions to either setTimeout or setInterval as this triggers the use of eval() internally.
Modifying the Object class prototype (this is a particularly bad anti-pattern)

To summarize, an anti-pattern is a bad design that is worthy of documenting. Knowledge about them will help you recognize such anti-patterns in your code and hence improve code quality.

Applying Design Patterns and Testing

Once a design pattern has been implemented and validated, we need to ensure that it works across multiple browser and browser versions seamlessly. LambdaTest is a cross browser testing platform for manual and automated cross browser testing. It includes more than 2000 real browsers & browser versions, and allows browser compatibility regression testing across all major browsers and browser versions.

You can also leverage LT Browser, a developer friendly tool to perform a detailed analysis of the responsiveness of your design patterns across popular devices and viewports.

Conclusion

Design patterns represent some of the best practices adopted by experienced object-oriented software developers. They are time-tested solutions for various software design problems. In this article, we have explored common design patterns in JavaScript. Additionally, we also briefly discussed Anti-Patterns and how we can test websites with such patterns on LambdaTest platform. Hopefully, this chapter will enable you to get accustomed to various JavaScript design patterns. To dive deeper into the concept, do checkout Learn JavaScript Design Patterns by Addy Osmani.

Top 9 PHP Frameworks For Web Development In 2021

Rahul — Tue, 04 May 2021 07:21:25 +0000

With an average global salary of $39k, PHP is one of the most popular programming languages in the developer community. It’s the language behind the most popular CMS, WordPress. It is in-use by 79% of total websites globally, including the most used social network- Facebook, the largest digital encyclopedia – Wikipedia, China’s news giant Xinhuanet, and Russia’s social network VK.com.

It would be unfair not to credit the rising number of PHP web development frameworks in popularising PHP. Today, we’ve some really good web development frameworks in PHP like Laravel, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, etc. These development frameworks provide a set of libraries & API functions to accelerate the web application development process securely.

Sadly, despite all these glittery facts & figures, some dare say “PHP is a dead language.” In fact, in a recent survey, 62% of respondents voted PHP as one of the most dreaded programming languages. In the same study, only 3% desired to learn PHP. But google trends for search keywords “php” and “javascript” narrate another story. While the debates will continue, be assured that PHP is not dying anytime soon. Having said that, check out the 9 most popular PHP frameworks for web development.

9 best PHP frameworks for website development in 2021

1. Laravel

Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks for web development with 64k+ stars on GitHub. Though it ranks 7 on PHP Benchmarks list of top-performing web development PHP frameworks, it tops our list given its huge community, rich feature set, and ease of use.

Why should you consider Laravel?

Open source, huge community, Extensive documentation, Zero overheads for CFOs, LTS

Laravel is an open-source web development framework. Of-course, free. It enjoys awe-inspiring support from the PHP developer community. And as a result, Laravel wheels are always in motion. Right from its launch in 2011 to the time of writing this insight, there have been 20 mega releases, Laravel 8 being the latest stable version. The Laravel web framework community provides LTS versions too. Laravel 6.0 LTS is currently under support. Versions before it are no longer maintained.

Performance, Security & Scalability, faster-time-to-market

You can securely develop Laravel powered apps using MVC architecture. Using an object-oriented and functional programming approach, you can develop highly modular code-bases for your application. This modularity and segmented architecture make the Laravel web framework highly extensible. That means Laravel developers can leverage ready-to-use first-party packages like Envoy, Passport, Horizon, Cashier, JetStream, and Fortify. This also saves significant development time, and new products can be shipped with faster-time-to-market. In-built authentication features can leverage encrypted storage of data for enhanced security. Performance can be boosted by using session & cached memory, optimizing the garbage collection process would also mean improved task execution.

Rich off-the-shelf features
- Built-in access management features for easy authentication & user management
- Easily integrate with popular email services like Amazon SES, sendmail, etc., Delivering messages through SMS/ Slack is also possible.
- In-built Eloquent ORM to convert data between incompatible type systems. Eloquent ORM is an API interface to easily interact with the database. Developers don’t need to write complex queries.

Advanced Eloquent -ORM query example to select destinations –

use App\Models\Destination;
use App\Models\Flight;

return Destination::addSelect(['last_flight' => Flight::select('name')
    ->whereColumn('destination_id', 'destinations.id')
    ->orderByDesc('arrived_at')
    ->limit(1)
])->get();

Bundle packaging system and composer dependency manager for integrating framework agnostic packages to your PHP web development project. You may use ‘Packalyst,’ which is a huge collection of Laravel PHP packages, 1500+ in total.
“Reverse routing” for linking and routes, CLI interface, “Blade templating engine” for designing templates, “RESTful controllers” for request handling, in-built “PHUnit Testing,” “Lazy collection,” “Database seeding,” “Real Time-event broadcasting,” “background processing” are some other features that make development work with Laravel an easy-peasy experience.

These are the reasons it is considered among the best PHP frameworks for website development.

Who uses the Laravel framework for their web applications?

Mastercard
Razorpay
Olx
Wattpad
TransferGo
9GAG, and 3000+ companies

Why explore Laravel framework alternatives for web development?

No built-in support is available in RoR or Django framework.
Easy to start, complex to master.
Usual open-source LTS issues, i.e., migration issues and incompatibility of newer versions with older ones.

2. CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is a rapid web application development framework with a ridiculously small size. CodeIgniter 4, the latest version of CodeIgniter, is a mere 1.2 MB in size. Like Laravel, it’s open-source and boasts 18k+ stars on GitHub. Just because of how bare-bone it is, we have included it in the second position. Like several other frameworks, CodeIgniter provides a set of libraries and an intuitive interface to accelerate PHP web app development. Currently, this is not tracked by PHPbenchmarks.com but is considered among the best PHP frameworks for website development.

What are the features of CodeIgniter?

Server requirements
- Codeigniter framework v4 requires PHP 7.2 or above.
- Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite3
It is partly PSR-compliant. This means it follows PHP standard recommendations for class and file naming standards, implements autoloading and logger interface, but doesn’t strictly follow caching or HTTP message interface.
Easy to get started. You may directly download CodeIgniter, or you can use composer to install it. Consider it as the “create-react-app” of PHP-CodeIgniter. All you need to do is execute the below command to get started with CodeIgniter:

composer create-project codeigniter4/appstarter project-root

CodeIgniter applications can be built using MVC architecture and adhere to object-oriented programming practices.
It provides classes for FTP, image manipulation, email sending, user-agent, unit testing, security, encryption, caching driver, throttling, typography, pagination, form validation, etc. It also provides two tools, i.e., Timer & Iterator, for benchmarking your PHP application.
You can carry out feature testing by extending FeatureTestCase or FeatureTestTrait class. The template for writing test cases looks as below-

<?php namespace App;

use CodeIgniter\Test\FeatureTestCase;

class TestFoo extends FeatureTestCase
{
    public function setUp(): void
    {
        parent::setUp();
    }

    public function tearDown(): void
    {
        parent::tearDown();
    }
}

Who uses CodeIgniter for their web applications?

Sprout Social
Buffer
Grindr
3M
Geekyants
Accenture
Ola
Remitly
Amplify
BigBazaar, and 1700+ others

Why explore alternative web development frameworks?

No templating engine
No official stand on LTS versions
No in-built authentication, authorization features
Developers have to write their modules from scratch, while in other best PHP web frameworks like Laravel, a rich set of in-built ready-to-use modules are available.

3. Symfony

PHP Benchmarks rank Symfony at number 3 in the list of PHP frameworks for web development. With 24.5k+ GitHub stars, Symfony is not just a PHP web development framework but also provides a set of 50 stand-alone reusable PHP components for faster web app development. Using Symfony, you can develop web applications, microservices, and APIs too. With commercial support from SensioLabs, Symfony stands ahead of many on the list.

What are the features of Symfony?

50+ decoupled components easily installable using composer.
You’ve ‘Lock’ component for managing access to shared resources, ‘Routing’ for obviously implementing routes, ‘Guard’ for creating complex authentications, ‘MIME’ for manipulating MIME messages and creating advanced emails, ‘Security’ for advanced authorizations, ‘PHPUnit Bridge’ for test reporting.
Symfony uses open-source Doctrine ORM for database operations. It’s a great alternative to writing repetitive SQL code.
Symfony supports a diverse set of databases MySql, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server, and SAP Sybase, etc.,
Though PHP itself is a templating language, Symfony provides Twig, a fast, secure, and flexible templating engine. It makes templating concise through its template-oriented syntax. For example, printing default value while looping over an empty array looks as compact as:

{% for player in players %}
    * {{ player.score }}
{% else %}
    No players data.
{% endfor %}

This is why it is counted among the best PHP frameworks for website development.

Who uses Symfony for their web applications?

BlaBlaCar
Spotify
Magento
Statista
Practo
Naukri.com

Why explore alternative web development frameworks?

For simpler projects, Laravel would make more sense.
Laravel beats Symfony in performance.

4. Laminas Project

Laminas Project is a continuation of one of the most popular PHP web development frameworks, i.e., the Zend PHP framework. Zend had 5k+ GitHub stars before transitioning into the Laminas Project. Zend v3 still ranks 5th in PHPBenchmark. Laminas has three major verticals:

Mezzio for building middleware applications in PHP.
Mezzio for building middleware applications in PHP.
API tools for creating RESTful APIs in PHP.

What are the features of Laminas?

It is indeed an enterprise-ready PHP web development framework. Laminas Project provides components for dependency injection, caching, form validations, PubSubHubbub(WebSub) interactions, logging, routing, pagination, session managements, diagnostic tests, event dispatchers, feed parsers, etc.
Event-driven flexible MVC framework for building scalable PHP applications.
Supported databases include MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle, MariaDB, IBMDB2, PostgreSQL, etc.
Some noteworthy components of the Laminas framework, apart from the usual ones:
- ‘Laminas-log’ – is a PSR-3 compliant logger with support for filtering and formatting.
- ‘Laminas-form’ for implementing complex forms, casting them into business objects.
- Laminas-math’ for generating cryptographic numbers
- ‘Laminas-session’ for object-oriented interface to session & storage
- ‘Laminas-cache’ for caching implementations and codified caching storage strategies for callbacks.
- ‘Laminas-db’ for database abstraction, SQL operations.
- ‘Laminas-xml2json’ for converting xml documents to JSON format.
- ‘Laminas-SOAP’ for creating SOAP applications and interacting with them.

Who uses Laminas for their web applications?

According to LinuxFoundation, the Zend framework (now Laminas) has been downloaded more than 400 Mn times. The prominent users include BNP Paribas, BBC, and Offers.com.

Why explore alternative web development frameworks?

Laravel beats ZEND in terms of performance.
Documentation is not beginner-friendly.

5. Yii

The Yii framework has a whopping 11Mn+ downloads from Packagist and 13.6k+ stars on GitHub. Yii, branded as ‘YES, it is!’, is a fast, secure, flexible PHP framework for web development, especially for building MVC architecture websites. It ranks 4 on the PHP Benchmarks list. Yii is a strictly Object-Oriented PHP framework and requires knowledge of inheritance, polymorphism, etc.

What are the features of Yii?

Thorough Documentation – From installation to explaining web concepts to deploying applications and everything in-between, Yii has documented it all.
Robust Cache Component – From server side caching to client-side in browser caching, Yii has easy to follow guides for implementing different sorts of caching i.e., data caching, fragment caching, page caching, query caching, HTTP caching etc. For instance,

// to fetch cached data
$data = $cache->get($key);
if ($data === false) {
    // $data is unavailable. Compute it from scratch
    $data = $this->computeFromScratch();
    // now store the static data to cache
    $cache->set($key, $data);
}
// $data will be available for cache retrieval.

You can rapidly prototype an MVP using the GII2 code generator provided by Yii to implement CRUD operations for a database.
Security features – Yii provides frameworks & guidelines for implementing authentication, authorization, cryptographic features, password handling, trusted proxies, and headers.
- For example, authentication can be implemented using the ‘User component’ and implementing Yii’s ‘IdentityInterface’ interface.
Similarly, Yii provides components and classes for handling requests, working with databases, displaying data, fetching data, debugging code, and many more.

Who uses Yii for their web applications?

Deloitte
Fujitsu
Lenovo
Discovery
Lulo
Utrip

Why explore alternative web development frameworks?

Strong object-oriented programming prerequisite.
If performance is a priority, then better alternatives are available.

6. CakePHP

CakePHP is an open-source web development PHP framework. It’s ranked 6th in PHP Benchmarks, just above the Laravel web development framework. The newly released v4.0 comes with a renovated skeleton design and provides APIs to enable developers for rapid application development. On GitHub, it has 8.3k+ stars and 555 contributors. For commercial support, you have cakeDC. CakeDC is the organization behind CakePHP. You can build highly secure and scalable web applications, including social networks, eCommerce, and online collaboration platforms using CakePHP.

What are the features of CakePHP?

It adheres to MVC architecture for PHP-powered web application development.
Supports other popular design patterns like Associative Data Mapping, Front Controller, etc.
Supports other popular design patterns like Associative Data Mapping, Front Controller, etc.
You can leverage code generation and scaffolding features for faster prototype development. Scaffolding refers to techniques to easily access databases or generate project code using certain high-level tools.
Like many other web development frameworks in this list, the CakePHP web development framework also gets shipped with all batteries included. You have ready-to-use Caching, authentication, validation, internationalization, database APIs features.
Minimal configuration required. No need for YAML or XML config files.
You get paid support if required.
You’ve Namespace cake/ORM with classes for
- Eager-loading (EagerLoader)
- registry/factor tables (TableRegistry)
- Handling and loading of construction behavior objects (BehaviorRegistry)
- Converting array data into entities (Marshaller)

This makes it count among the best PHP frameworks for website development.

Who uses CakePHP for their web applications?

Hyundai
BMW
Blendtec
MIT
Billabong
Edureka
House Party

Why explore alternative web development frameworks?

Abrupt migrations.
If you’re building performance-critical applications. It’s not like CakePHP’s performance is not good, but if performance comparing websites have ranked other frameworks to be better performing, you must consider their candidature.

7. Slim

Unlike the other web development PHP frameworks mentioned above, Slim, as the name goes, is a PHP micro-framework for web development. Are you aware of micro-frameworks? The ones listed above are full-stack frameworks. Slim, with 10k+ stars on GitHub, is a minimalistic web application and API development framework. Basically, this means you will only have the recipe and won’t get any ready-to-consume functions. In a full-stack framework, you get components, classes, interface for authorization, authentication, routing, paging, database operations, etc. In micro-framework, you get bare minimum support for HTTP requests and routing requests to appropriate controllers. Then why choose a micro-framework? Because it gives you flexibility and high-extensibility.

What are the features of Slim?

Efficient, fast routers – Slim ships with powerful ROUTER. This maps routes to specific HTTP request handler methods and URLs. Router natively supports different URL types, including the ones with parameters and patterns. Pattern-based URLs are commonly implemented in e-commerce apps.
PSR-7 Support – It’s necessary to implement PSR-7 implementation in your Slim project.
Extensible with first-party PHP components and third-party PHP components on packagist.

Who uses Slim for their web applications?

Gamned
Bootiq
AgriTask
GreenBot
HHEY

Why to explore alternative web development frameworks?

If you need a full-stack framework.
Steep learning curve for complex projects.
For large projects, microframeworks are not suited. No point in reinventing the wheels.

8. Phalcon

Phalcon is a platform-agnostic ridiculously fast web development PHP framework delivered as a C-extension. It provides high performance and low resource consumption. On GitHub, it has scored 10k+ stars and has 242+ contributors.

What are the features of Phalcon?

Low overheads for MVC architecture web applications – It is compiled to the native platform and is not interpreted.
The C-extensions classes and functions are loaded with PHP on the webserver as the daemon process starts.
You can build both single and multi-module MVC applications, as depicted in the image above.
You can leverage dependency injection features, autoloader features, phalcon ORM for playing with DB records.
It natively supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite.
You have Phalcon query language for writing queries, Phalcon transactions to ensure data integrity.
The Phalcon cache component supports backends like Redis, Memcached, Mongo, etc., for quick access to pre-processed data.
Form-builder, flash messages, VOLT templating engine, translation components are other features worth noting.

These are the main reasons to consider Phalcon among the best PHP frameworks for website development.

Who uses Phalcon for their web applications?

SocialVeo
KingHost
Proshore
Urban Sports Club
PlaceOnAir
ESCHER

Why explore alternative web development frameworks?

Not ideal for shared hosting.
No C know-how is required, but if a critical framework level issue arises, you need to debug in C.
More Popular framework alternatives with huge communities are available.

9. Lumen

Lumen is a micro-framework for developing PHP-powered web applications. It is written in PHP and created by the Laravel team itself. Lumen has 7.1k+ stars on GitHub and 45+ contributors.

What are the features of Lumen?

You can build lightning-fast APIs and microservices for Laravel based applications using Lumen. It is faster than Slim and Silex, the other popular alternative PHP microframeworks.
You can use Laravel features like Eloquent ORM, testing, validation, authorization, caching, queues, views, etc., with minimal configurations.
Easily upgradable to full-fledged Laravel application if need be.
Can leverage Laravel Homestead for meeting system requirements. It works with PHP>=7.3

Can leverage Laravel Homestead for meeting system requirements. It works with PHP>=7.3

Threat data science
Index.co
Publy
Piio
ZenChef
Agro24
mPokket
Rooter
Codepolitan

Why explore alternative web development frameworks?

If you don’t like Laravel.
If you need a full-stack and best PHP web framework.
More suited to microservices and APIs, for large-scale applications, consider a full-stack PHP web development framework.

Wrapping Up!

PHPixie, FuelPHP, Ubiquity, Symlex are some other popular & rising PHP web development frameworks. If you’re building a new web application, we think you must be informed that multiple intuitive web development frameworks have evolved over the years. AngularJs, ReactJs ( not a framework but a library), and Django are creating strong ripples in the web community.

So, if you’re just exploring web development, do consider these PHP alternatives. If you’re already a PHP pro, choose any PHP web development frameworks that best suit your needs. Irrespective of the framework you chose for development, LambdaTest is versatile enough to support all your web application testing requirements with out-of-the-box features like responsive testing over 45+ devices, parallel testing, simulated network testing, recording testing sessions, etc. Have you subscribed to the LambdaTest newsletter yet? Ah! I wouldn’t have missed it 🙂 Happy Testing!

Increasing Product Release Velocity by Debugging and Testing in Production

Rahul — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 08:18:37 +0000

Date || Time: 13 April 2021 | 10 AM PST

Brief

Code faster. Test faster. Build faster. Deploy faster. Modern release cycles demand for pace and we do everything we can to ramp up our CI/CD pipeline and get those builds out ASAP. But just because your build passed all the right quality gates, it doesn’t mean you’re done. Production errors happen all the time and cause more and more damage the longer they linger.

In this webinar, Harshit Paul, Product & Growth Manager from LambdaTest and Idan Shatz, Developer Advocate at Ozcode, hitch up to show how both testing in Production and Production Debugging can truly get you to “DONE” so you can move on to the next build faster to increase your overall release velocity.

What will you Learn

Roadblocks to release velocity.
How LambdaTest & OzCode can help accelerate go to market?
Live Action — Demo 1 — Solving Cross Browser issues.
Demo 2 — Solving complete E2E issues from Front-end to Back-end.
Demo 3 — Testing & Debugging issues in production.
Best practices to accelerate release velocity like a pro.
Q&A session

Register Your Seats Here: Increasing Product Release Velocity by Debugging and Testing in Production

Top Automation Testing Trends To Look Out In 2021

Rahul — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 07:34:09 +0000

Back in the old days, software testing was just about finding errors in a product. The goal being – to improve product quality. But nowadays, the range of software testing has broadened. When it comes to software testing, automation testing has always been in the vanguard. Going by the latest automation testing trends, the software testing industry is expected to evolve even more than in the last decade.

As per the MarketsAndMarkets report, the global automation testing market size is expected to grow by USD 28.8 billion by 2024. To keep up with the pace of the ever-changing landscape of testing, you should be familiar with the latest automation testing trends.

In this post, we will discuss the top automation testing trends that you must look out for in 2021.

Shift Left and Shift Right Approach

With the rise of shift left approach testers started writing test cases just after the requirement was clear, and development continued parallelly with testing. However, the shift right approach focuses on testing, monitoring, and updating the app in production environments, rather than completely handling the product’s responsibility to the Ops team,

But, using the shift right approach doesn’t mean you should focus less on shift left. Both approaches go hand in hand. Shift left helps you to create a better development path so that fewer bugs are caught after development. While shift right is about creating a plan that allowed the team to continue testing after the product has a user base. Thus leading to better user acceptance testing and real-time load and performance testing.

The shift right approach is one of the latest automation testing trends that will become more prevalent in 2021.

Cloud-Based Cross Browser Testing

Gone are the days when developing a website meant you have to make it responsive for a specific mobile, tab, and desktop. Nowadays, most companies and customers prefer a site developed in the mobile-first approach. At present, there are hundreds of devices in the market, each with its own resolution and browsers. It’s quite costly to set up such a huge testing infrastructure. That is why most companies and individuals have started moving towards cloud-based cross browser testing frameworks.

2021 will see an increasing demand in the use of such frameworks. It’s time for you to become a part of such automation testing trends. And, if you are using a framework like LambdaTest, you can seamlessly test your web application across hundreds of device-OS-browser combinations. And it’s not about manual UI testing. You can execute Selenium automation testing as well.

Role of Automation in Risk Compliance and Security Testing

Data security and compliance is a huge thing to look out for a while developing a product in 2021. Remember the incident that happened with Facebook? Government regulations are in place that restricts the usage of a customer’s data by a company. For example, if you are developing a product in the EU, you must comply with Global Data Privacy Regulations or GDPR. You have to follow other privacy laws based on the nature of the product you are developing. For example, if you are developing an app meant for usage in the medical domain, you must follow HIPAA. But how does it impact testing? Not only that, what role does automation play in it?

The bad news, you can no longer use a customer’s real data to test real-time scenarios.

The good news, there are alternatives. There are tools like Chef.io that scan your software system and find out if there is any test data that is not in compliance with a certain data security standard.

You can also use an automated test management tool like Datprof or EMS Data Generator that helps you with data masking or synthetic test data generation. The generated test data simulates a real user’s data. You can use that to test your application while complying with privacy laws.

At the same time, you must check that the customer’s data is completely safe from breaches or hacks. Carry out security audits, educate your employees, and arrange security and compliance training to prevent an unfortunate lawsuit.

The role of automation in risk compliance and security is one of the most prominent automation testing trends to look for in 2021.

AI-Powered Automation Testing Tools

Automation testing is aimed towards reducing manual efforts for repetitive processes like regression testing. But, even writing the test cases and scripts requires manual effort. Since customers nowadays want a faster delivery, how can we reduce even a tiny bit of manual effort? The latest and the most powerful concept of artificial intelligence comes with a solution.

The most significant advantage that AI-powered tools provide is – ease of maintenance. They have the ability to heal better. These tools constantly monitor the code and look for changes or patterns. Once they find out any change in the application, the tool modifies the test script accordingly. Tools like TestCraft and Testim use machine learning and AI to authorize, execute, and maintain automated tests. Looking at their acceptance, they are going to be highly popular automation testing trends of 2021. Thus in the future, even when your application is growing large with thousands of test cases, you have no need to worry about maintaining or modifying your scripts. AI will do the job for you.

Selenium and Codeless Automation

Selenium is already the most popular tool for automated testing of web applications. It will continue to maintain its popularity since:

It is free to use and open source
Supports multiple browsers and operating systems
Supports multiple languages like C#, Python, Java, Perl, PHP, and Ruby
The IDE has tools that help you to debug, record, or edit the test cases.

But with the growing popularity of AI and ML, a change is coming to Selenium in 2021. Both Machine learning and AI aims to provide alternate means of repetitive and error-prone tasks. Testcraft and many other tools are already in this domain. Powered by Selenium and AI, these automation tools provide codeless automation testing support. With such latest trends in automation testing, testers can now automatically generate a self-healing Selenium code. As I have discussed earlier, AI-powered tools can easily detect a change in the application and modify the script. With these tools, testers will no longer need to worry about test case maintenance.

Performance Testing of IoT Based Apps

The usage of IoT devices is growing to a huge extent. With more users purchasing smart interconnected devices, new business opportunities will continue to replace the old solutions in 2021. Since the job of IoT devices is to simplify the everyday task of a user, if you are developing an IoT app, you must take special care of performance testing. Trust me on this, a user will not think twice before uninstalling your app if it fails to turn on the smart light of his home instantly after he orders Google Assistant or Alexa.

With the increasing number of IoT devices and apps, companies and developers will focus on their products’ performance testing. Thus, going by the latest trends in automation testing, 2021 we will see a boom in the use of tools like IoTIFY, MATLAB and Simulink, and other simulators. These tools ease the life of developers. How? Simulating real-time prototypes and checking how much optimized the apps are to handle the load of multiple devices and commands.

Impact of Robotic Process Automation on Test Automation

The role of RPA is evolving in the automation testing domain. At present, RPA has cleared its importance by replacing manual effort in load, regression, and performance testing. With RPA in place, testers can now focus on usability and exploratory testing. In 2021, the use of RPA will be made formal in large-scale applications, and will be among high impacting automation testing trends. By implementing RPA, companies can benefit by providing:

A better quality and well-maintained product, leading to better customer service.
Become more efficient in digitizing process data.
Reduce the cost by decreasing the need for manual effort.
Ensure that business processes comply with the necessary standards and regulations.

Including QAOps in your Test Management Tool

Almost all companies follow the CI/CD approach nowadays. DevOps bridges the communication gap between the development and Ops team. But, QA is an important part of CI/CD. QA teams must not work in silos. QAOps has started becoming a trend, as it is bridging the gap between QA and other teams. But, what are the steps for succeeding in QAOps?

Developers should start writing unit tests.
Ops team should help to identify UX problems in a production environment.

Only then, Dev, Ops, and QA teams will collaborate. Thus, giving stakeholders complete viability into the QA process.

In the DevOps age, QAOps has drawn a bit of attention to the challenges QA teams were facing in the past years. 2021 will see the evolution of test management tools. The tools need to be more flexible and ready to support QAOps. If your aim is to build a successful team that follows both DevOps and QAOps, the test management tool that you are choosing should focus more on:

Use of automation.
Help in test development.
Focus on API and performance testing.
Support integration with build and version control tools.

Use of Automated Tools for Blockchain Applications

In 2019, by blockchain technology, the only thing that came to our mind was bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. But currently, the scope of blockchain technology has grown a lot. Also, it is used for food, shipping, supply chain management, and other industries. This is because – blockchain provides the highest level of security for any financial transaction.

In 2021, the demand for QA experts with specific domain knowledge of blockchain app testing will increase, and will be among the top automation testing trends to look for. That being said, apart from domain knowledge, testing professionals should have some knowledge of automated tools. There are popular tools like Ethereum tester or Exomum Testkit. With the help of these tools, you can test the execution of a transaction and the API in a blockchain system.

Blockchain development mostly follows the Agile approach to development. But when it comes to testing, the Shift left approach is becoming popular to minimize the defect count.

Automation Testing of Cloud Services

Automation testing in the cloud comes with the advantage of low cost, scalability, and easy maintenance. But, what is the advantage of a cloud-based tool? With cloud based tools, you carry out mobile and web testing in different environments and machines, without setting up your infrastructure. Just like 2020, 2021 will see a huge demand in cloud computing. If you have worked on Amazon web services, you might be aware of Astadia, a framework that is highly beneficial for covering load testing along with spike and stress testing.

Another popular cloud-based tool is the Xamarin test cloud. The tool allows testers to write test scripts in C#. By using this tool, you can run acceptance testing of your mobile app over multiple devices, get high-resolution snapshots along with relevant data like RAM and CPU usage. Hence, one of the latest trends in automation testing will involve testing such frameworks for your cloud-based product in 2021.

Automation in Mobile App Testing

Companies have already started following the mobile-first approach in web development in the last few years. In recent years, many companies have started developing app versions of their web applications. With the count of mobile apps increasing regularly, companies will focus more on testing mobile apps. According to a report, the market of mobile app testing will generate a revenue of $8.23 billion by 2025.

With the growing number of mobile devices of different resolutions and OS behavior, we can undoubtedly say that companies will look for testers with experience in automated mobile app testing. Seeing the latest trends in automation testing, frameworks like Appium, Selendroid, Robotium are going to be more prevalent in 2021. Along with that, the demand for testers having experience in these tools will increase as well.

Check how LambdaTest can help you with mobile automation testing with its Appium Mobile Web Automation Grid.

NoOps for Automation

The hype of automation has taken over the complete IT industry. At this time, people tag anything that can utilize or yield an automation platform to be a futuristic model. NoOps perfectly fits the description. The goal of NoOps is to automate the entire work of the Ops team. Although the concept is great, it is still evolving.

If you have a startup or are managing a project where complete automation is yet to implement, NoOps has restricted usage. A fully functional and experienced IT Ops team can provide a professional insight that can beat automated analytics anytime. So, we can say that although NoOps offers great promises, to some extent in 2021, human intervention is still needed.

Bottom Line

Although automation aims to eliminate manual effort, it’s needless to say that a machine can’t operate by itself. We need a human to operate a machine. Although automation testing evolved a lot in the past years, manual testers’ importance is still there. A skilled manual tester can write test cases so that fewer automation scripts can provide huge coverage.

Even now, when AI and ML are aiming towards codeless automation, we still need manual intervention to configure the AI processes. And there are still some domains like user acceptance testing or UX testing where automation will fail to beat the keen observation and instinct of a manual tester. A company will succeed in delivering a product with optimum quality only with – a proper strategy to utilize manual and automation wherever required.

What would be your say for automation testing trends in 2021? Let me know in the comment section below. Happy testing! 🙂

Top 10 Codeless Testing Tools For 2021

Rahul — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 07:42:50 +0000

With the advancement and growth in technology and the arrival of DevOps and Agile, the software testing industry is witnessing numerous changes. Software Testing has traversed a long path from manual testing to record-and-playback sophisticated testing tools, then to test automation, and now to codeless automated testing.

World Quality Report, 2020–2021, says that not having advanced programming know-how and expertise is considered one of the critical challenges when applying automated browser testing to agile projects. We could perhaps state, the development of codeless testing tools is a promising solution to the challenge.

This blog is all about taking you through the top codeless testing tools you should look forward to in 2021. However, before jumping to that, let’s understand the What and Why of codeless automated testing.

What is Codeless Automated Testing?

Codeless automated testing means executing automation testing without using any script. Writing automated scripts could be challenging for QA engineers as the code required to be written in every suitable programming language is arduous and time-consuming.

With codeless automated testing, you can minimize the testing time over repetitive test cases without any coding efforts. There are many codeless testing tools available in the market, which encompass a set of built-in features without any complicated coding. Some of the significant features include:

Drag and Drop interface.
Record and Playback.
Integrations of ML or AI technologies.
Lower maintenance.

Why Should You Consider Codeless Automated Testing?

Performing codeless automated testing is not completely code-free; however, there are many reasons why you must consider implementing codeless test automation into the software testing process.

Codeless testing facilitates easy testing with the team spending little effort on automation.
Codeless automation test tools increase test coverage.
With codeless automation, even the complicated test scripts are simple to change and manage.
Codeless testing is a quick way to automate the test scenario.
Codeless testing has a user-friendly interface.
Codeless testing is cost-effective.

Best Codeless Testing Tools For 2021

Let’s explore the most popular codeless testing tools that help QA specialists to go onboard for the Codeless Test Automation journey!

1. Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio is ranked among the top codeless testing tools of 2020. It is a popular choice for its extensive range of test abilities across Desktop, Mobile, Web, APIs, and applications. Its unique features are simple-to-use and best for experienced and beginners QA engineers. The credits sum up why it is at the top of our list.

Katalon comes with an accessible interface for test experts and business users. The drag-and-drop commands, record and playback traits make it a perfect codeless automated testing tool. QA engineers can easily import external test libraries and allow the tool to perform the implementation, avoiding building a framework from scratch.

Core Features:

Requires minimal programming skills.
Supports API, web, desktop, and mobile automation testing.
Comes with in-built test-case libraries, project templates, object repositories, and keywords.
Supports native plugins for the famous Continuous Integration tools.
Capable of locating modifications in the object and creating tests consequently.
Powerful record and playback feature.
Comprehensive and robust reporting capacities.
Supports in-built integrations like Issue Management, Notifications & Communication, and Test Management.

Learn how you can perform codeless cross browser compatibility testing on multiple environments by integrating Katalon with LambdaTest.

2. LEAPWORK

LEAPWORK is an advanced cloud-based, codeless selenium automation testing platform. It supports the testing of many forms of apps, including SAP, Windows, and Web. With LEAPWORK, you can enable your agile project team to speed up the development and implementation of the QA automated testing procedure.

Designed for both Desktop apps and Web apps, this tool is built with the entire software development team in mind. LEAPWORK comes with predefined building blocks and default libraries for automation, aiding QA teams to improve productivity and save time.

Core Features:

Capability to reuse automated flows across distinct test cases.
Visualize flow builder through drag & drop building blocks.
Codeless capacities to shorten the learning curve for QA teams.
Supports cross browser tests and parallel runs.
Easy integration with the current DevOps toolset.
Smart recorder for capturing test steps & run them automatically.
Capable of managing huge volumes of data and supports various data sources.

Check how to overcome test automation challenges by integrating LEAPWORK with LambdaTest.

3. Ranorex Studio

Ranorex Studio is an all-purpose and among the most popular codeless testing tools for both professionals and beginners. This is a perfect tool to automate mobile, web-based, and desktop apps without having the need for a scripting language to automate the app. Ranorex mainly uses standard programming languages like C# & VB.NET.

You can use the drag-&-drop User Interface objects, capture-&-replay tool, and code modules to automate regression testing using this tool. Ranorex also allows testers to generate modular automation scripts that are maintainable and effective, irrespective of programming expertise. The Ranorex core API is incorporated with Se (Selenium) WebDriver; hence one can easily deliver cross browser testing on a Selenium Grid.

Core Features:

Cross-platform tests, counting mobile, web, and desktop environments.
Records & replays the user’s communication to generate reusable scripts that can be modified with its action editor.
Test scripts can be run between the commands of a specific test case.
RanoreXPath technology recognizes the UI components of the app.
The exclusive spy engine tracks descriptions of each User Interface component on the screen.
Compare and confirm images with an accepted image that can be straight uploaded in the software.
Integrations with Azure DevOps, JIRA, Bugzilla, TestRail, Git, Jenkins, and more, so one could easily build an entire automated tests toolchain.

4. TestCraft

This is one of the most incredible codeless testing tools, which was introduced as an E2E (end-to-end) test automation platform for continuous and regression tests. Similar to other codeless testing tools with the special feature of Record and Playback, this tool also offers a test script with inputs coded beforehand that must be modified afterward. Tweaking some codes might break the testing script.

Therefore, Smart Binding is mentioned as the smart component locators that can instantly capture several attributes like position, IDs, text size, or value. They can also rebound during a run to go with modifications in the code.

Core Features:

Provides agility by generating test scenarios even before the app gets ready.
Support multiple data sets and parallel implementation.
At once binding to adjust to most app changes.
Flows and Elements can be reusable across scenarios.
Smart analysis and reports on each test action.
The chunk of built-in integrations like Issue Management, Test Management, Notifications & Communication.

5. Selenium IDE

This codeless selenium automation tool allows you to automate web applications with everything that Selenium offers without needing to write codes. Selenium IDE uses the record & playback feature to support codeless automated testing.

Selenium IDE can be extended with plugins. They bring in new commands to IDE or incorporate them with other services. Selenium IDE is the simple to use codeless automated testing tool that gives instantaneous feedback and allows you to run testing on any Operating System + browser combination using the SIDE (or the Selenium IDE command-line) runner. This is why codeless testing tools have become popular as they relieve tester’s headaches and critical challenges.

Core Features:

Allows you to run a particular test or an entire test-suite that counts a group of tests.
Setting breakpoints & pausing on exemptions makes it simple and effortless for debugging testing from the IDE itself.
Used for browser automation testing as cross-browser testing can be implemented using the Selenium SIDE runner.
Supports several commands used to create loops, insert waits, rise asserts, and more
It has a wide-ranging set of commands that allow a control flow structure. Commands like if..else, if, etc. assist in executing conditional testing from the IDE
The run command allows testers to reuse a specific test-case inside another test suite (or test case)
Supports a group of Selenese commands (or series of Se commands) that allows you to execute tests.
Trouble-free comparison and modification of test cases – Test scripts generated through IDE are stored as JSON files that make it simple to compare, change, and examine tests.

6. CloudQA

CloudQA is a robust integrated cloud-based automated testing platform launched to build, manage, and implement tests against several browsers separately and in parallel. CloudQA is not just a Record and Playback tool, but it offers its users an integrated report tool for rapidly generating and scheduling regression tests suits.

This amazing tool gives you the same power as Selenium, with no advanced programming expertise required. Recorded testing is put into manageable modules and visible incomprehensible forms. Even the same tests can be reused for load tests, regression tests, and synthetic monitoring.

Core Features:

Higher reusability for synthetic examining without changing any codes.
Scrutinize multiple data sets over varied browsers (e.g., Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome).
Huge and smooth capacity to maintain thousands of tests.
Smart Record & Playback tests with screenshots after each step.
Schedule and execute testing unattended.
Support for data-driven tests.
Bugs can be managed through 3rd-party integrations like Slack, Asana, GitHub, JIRA, etc.

7. Perfecto

Trusted by huge teams, this amazing tool is a cloud-based automated testing solution for mobile and web-based apps. It provides complete AI analytics with error classifications for optimizing the Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery pipeline. Multiple supported operating systems, browsers, and devices combinations for the web app and mobile tests are also provided.

Within Perfecto, strong and AI-driven bindings account for 97.4 percent of application changes. Its self-healing trait allows test scripts to run without any maintenance or disruptions continuously required. Its cloud-based solutions are developed to ensure they will work well no matter any market problem occurs, for instance, a new Android or iOS version update, new browser, or mobile phone release. Even though offering a bunch of sophisticated features, the Perfecto trial period is fairly short, which causes complexity for the team to evaluate it.

Core Features:

Smart analytics and reports.
AI-driven test maintenance capacities.
Increase the test reusability.
Debugging capacities & test management.
Limitlessly scalable execution on several Android gadgets and in parallel.
Speed up test procedure and fasten feedback between Developers and Quality Analyst.

8. AccelQ

It is an Artificial Intelligence-powered codeless automated testing tool that fulfills all the criteria of being a perfect codeless selenium automation tool. AccelQ can automate desktop, web, mainframes, and other apps with minimal effort and time, speeding up the test cycle. Unlike other codeless testing tools, its self-healing traits and natural English coding make it very different from others in the competition.

With an easy and fast-to-develop user interface, it can be incorporated with existing and famous DevOps and quality toolchains quite smoothly. Traits like Extendible & Open Source Alignment, Natural Language Programming, Automated Test Generation, and Intelligent Element Explorer have made it an instant hit among companies.

Core Features:

Highly safe and scalable for enterprise practice.
Capacity to automate User Interface and API with ease and in a similar flow
Creates app blueprint for great visual test designs.
Speedy development and least maintenance with Embedded Frameworks.
Projecting and Path Analysis traits for generating test scenarios.
Maximize test coverage through Data flows and Model UI.
Continuous integration-ready and allows in-sprint automation.

9. Sikuli

Sikuli uses image recognition techniques to run automated Graphical User Interface tests to identify and manage Graphical UI components. It can also be useful when working with the Se Webdriver, particularly when automating Java applets and Flash objects, while IDE scripts increase their capabilities.

In contrast to other codeless testing tools, a visible app Graphical User Interface is needed during run-time. Therefore, Sikuli can’t execute and maintain several scripts concurrently when the Graphical User Interface changes several times.

Core Features:

Supports several platforms like Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Record images at the Pixel level for User Interface verification.
Automate tests on distinct devices and emulators.
Incorporate with Se (Selenium) for automating desktop apps.
Record & Playback various actions such as mouse actions and drag & drop.

10. Mabl

Mabl is an intelligent codeless test automation tool built for CI/CD. It integrates automated E2E tests well into the complete SDLC (software development lifecycle) due to extensive web browser automation coverage like Selenium WebDriver, Selenium IDE, as well as other test automation tools.

By switching to Mabl, users can perform non-SDETS robust testing across all prominent browsers in parallel. This helps to eliminate the barrier of visual design, user experience tests, and performance tests. This eventually reduces the physical effort, hosted infrastructure, plus test case maintenance for automation testing by managing it all in the cloud.

Core Features:

The new and advanced User Interface and design approach.
Mabl Trainer browser plugins permit functional testing setup against apps in minutes.
Change test output to several issues (like BigQuery, JIRA)
Actionable insights can be exported via BigQuery, JIRA, and emails.
Auto-healing trait keeps the complete testing steady.
Easy bug management with tools like Jenkins, Slack, Bamboo, JIRA, etc.

Bonus Tool: QMetry Automation Studio

The QMetry Automation Studio, is an automation platform that helps organizations to seamlessly accomplish end-to-end test automation. In the era of digital transformation, the studio leverages multiple languages and frameworks that improve its adaptability.

It supports partial codeless automation for manual users or beginners and endless script extension and customization for automation engineers.

Conclusion

There is an overabundance of benefits of codeless testing tools that outweigh the negative aspects of automation testing. They eventually save significant expenses and time in coding functionalities and convey quality through favorable test coverage. However, these tools need more documentation, features, and modularity. In summary, software testers prefer codeless test automation as a critical component when it comes to the agile development procedure. It wouldn’t replace manual automation testing completely but to accelerate their work. It is still maturing with its unique advantages and requirements in 2021 and complements the picture’s whole automation tests.

Mobile First Approach and Testing - Push The Boundaries

Rahul — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 09:14:15 +0000

Date and Time: 16 March 2021 | Tue | 10 AM PST

Mobile has changed the way the world works. It touches every aspect of life. For most people, the first thing they look at when they wake up is their mobile screen, and the last thing they see before going to bed is their mobile screen. So to say mobile design and development is important for business would be an understatement. But even though it’s a well-known fact, many business owners are still designing and developing websites for desktops and then trying to make them work well on mobile. While in reality, it should be the other way round.

In this webinar, we will discuss this extremely important topic 'why a mobile first approach' is the most productive way going forward, and how LambdaTest and Applitools are addressing this evolving need to support their mobile first testing needs.

What will you learn

Why companies should push for a mobile-first strategy
How to evolve testing to support a mobile-first approach
Which automation techniques are needed for mobile-first testing beyond functional automation
Scaling Mobile Automation execution with Applitools and LambdaTest
Q&A session