Issue 233

COMMENT

Welcome to the 233rd issue!

The one thing that stood out to me while browsing through the news this week was the Testing Mnemonic Cards Repository.

It's a collection of helpful, easy-to-memorise phrases to help you apply good testing practices.

And what I like the most about it is the reference to the original source with more context about the specific mnemonic.

Kudos to Rahul Parwal for putting it together and sharing it with us.

Happy testing! 🙂

PS. I'm happy to announce the winner of the free ticket draw for the AutomationSTAR 2024 conference is Knut Haugland. Congratulations!

NEWS

Explaining Exploratory Testing

This is a great take by Maaret Pyhäjärvi on what exploratory testing means, especially in practical terms.

In relation to that, Cassandra H. Leung addresses the common notion by explaining that There Is No "Manual vs Automated Testing" Conflict.

How do you test APIs?

When you think of API testing, the request-response path seems the most obvious. But is there more to it? Of course, and here's how testers advise doing it.

Furthermore, someone's Looking for a free alternative to Postman for API testing.

It took me two decades to get to quality engineering

"With testing, we become generalists on amplifying all failure signals of things that might go wrong. With quality engineering, we join the path of fixing things."

I liked how Maaret Pyhäjärvi framed what it takes to go beyond testing, towards quality engineering.

Soft Skills 101 for Testers

What makes a great tester is not only the ability to properly test a product, but also excellent soft skills. Wondering which ones? Elena Voevodkina wrote a good guide.

Similarly, Maaike Brinkhof described My new superpower at work, explaining the importance of properly storing your knowledge.

AUTOMATION

Demystifying Fixtures and Test Doubles: Spies, Stubs, Mocks and London vs. Detroit

Just like explained in the title, if you're wondering what test doubles are for and when to use each type, here's a handy guide by Jamie Ingram.

End-to-End Testing an AI Application with Playwright and GitHub Actions

How would you test AI-based web apps? Jacob Habib demonstrates an interesting end-to-end testing solution using Playwright.

Solving a problem of duplicate steps in Cucumber BDD testing

Doing BDD right is a challenge in itself. But you may also find some limitations in tools. Vitaliy Potapov explains how to reduce code duplication and improve the maintenance of BDD scenarios.

Working with WebView context in Android mobile automation test

Testing web views on mobiles is not straightforward. If you face such a challenge on Android, Shivahari P describes in detail how to overcome that.

TOOLS

A Unified Approach to API, Database and E2E Testing with Playwright

Playwright has a built-in API request functionality that can support your end-to-end tests. Mahtab Nejad shows several examples of using it.

Furthermore, Aya Akl wrote a great guide on how to Enhance POM using Playwright Fixtures.

How to Automate your Prompt Engineering Matrix With Promptfoo

How would you test AI-based apps? Stuart Thomas demonstrates examples of using promptfoo — a tool for testing and evaluating LLM output quality.

Moreover, Viv Richards shares great, concise advice on Unlocking the Potential of ChatGPT with C.L.E.A.R Prompts.

How we changed Our Testing Framework From Cypress to Playwright

Nowadays, you can often see people comparing the two modern web app testing tools — Cypress and Playwright. But what is the difference in practice? Here are the lessons learned by Rodion Salnik.

Tuning the tools you create: testing code highlighting in IDEs

We all use tools for testing. But did you know the capabilities of the IDE in that area? Tamás Balog explores several different solutions.

Unobtrusive and testable issue reporting on IOS

If you work on testing iOS mobile apps, the swift-issue-reporting library by Brandon Williams and Stephen Celis can help you with debugging and issue reporting.

Which tool are you using to manage your test cases?

Test cases are one of the key artefacts of testing. But where do testers store them? This thread on Reddit gives insights into the diverse number of options.

VIDEOS

Testing Fundamentals, Mocking, Vitest, and More

In this 36-minute recording, Nikolay Advolodkin talks with Artem Zakharchenko about a lot of testing-related things, including one of the latest JavaScript test frameworks — Vitest.

When to Automate & When not?

It's a common question asked by many testing professionals. Daniel Knott pragmatically explains how to decide on that.

AND...

Edge cases... 😂

Thanks for reading!

If you like this newsletter and it helps you become a better tester, you can say thanks and buy me a coffee.

Issue 233 August 17th 2024