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Tag: App Testing

Posted on

What Makes Katalon a Fantastic Tool for Test Automation

Today there are many test automation tools available in the market.

But, why do we need an automation tool for testing at all?

What makes use of automation tool a “must-have” in the Software development industry?

In today’s software world, demand for high-quality apps and products within very tight deadlines gives very less time for testers to perform quality testing. It is just impossible to test the complete application/product manually every time there is a bug fix or new releases.

Also, when it comes to testing scenarios like a large number of users access the website or an application simultaneously, it leaves no choice for an organization than to hire several hundred thousand testers (and test machines too) to do a manual test.

However, these challenges can be overcome by a tester or an organization if they choose an appropriate automation tool that fits their testing requirement. Choosing the right automation tool helps in saving resources, time, effort and cost. It can also help in effective testing delivering a high-quality product meeting the deadline and thereby increasing organization revenue and achieving customer satisfaction.

Katalon Studio is one such test automation tool that provides advanced test generation capabilities, faster execution and excellent reporting features. With the evolving features, leveraging in-built features and templates, Katalon is becoming tester’s favourite automation testing tool.

What is Katalon?

Katalon is a free-license automation solution for testing web and mobile application. It is developed by Katalon LLC. Katalon’s first release to the public was in September 2016.

Katalon Studio is built on the open-source automation framework Selenium and Appium. It is a very user-friendly and simple tool with an intuitive interface. Katalon is becoming the number one testing tool in the software testing field. While with other test automation tools, it takes weeks to automate test scripts, Katalon Studio requires just a few hours to achieve the same.

Why Katalon?

What makes Katalon so powerful and unique in comparison to other test automation tools?

The main advantage of Katalon over other automation tools is that it requires very little coding experience.

While several other test automation tools require testers to have technical skills to design test scripts, Katalon Studio’s specialized IDE and simple interface make it very user-friendly for testers who have no prior coding experience. Testers with some development knowledge can use the advanced features of this tool for the automation purpose. Even a black box tester can use this tool efficiently for the automated testing of web and mobile applications.

The time and efforts required to design test scripts are greatly reduced using this tool. Reusability/ scalability aspects are some other major features of Katalon Studio. Katalon makes use of several of Selenium features, you can still leverage the features in Katalon Studio to build your own scripts.

Highlights/Features of Katalon

  • Katalon Studio plays an important role in DevOps toolchain. Tests can be easily integrated with CI tools like Jenkins and TeamCity using Console Mode Execution or non-GUI mode in Katalon studio. One can make avail of command-line mode execution by installing the Katalon Studio plugins using Katalon Store’s API keys. This is a very powerful feature supported by Katalon.
  • Katalon Studio supports dual scripting interface. The black box testers with limited or no coding experience can use its simple interface to create test scripts. The tool has record and playback and manual mode for non-programmers. Katalon Recorder records the test actions, captures the web elements and plays the recorded steps. Testers can play their recorded scripts as many times as they want for their testing. The learning curve is very less as testers do not essentially need any coding experience in this case.
  • Testers with an advanced level of coding experience can use the scripting mode for test script creation. Those who have knowledge in Groovy can easily edit the test scripts in scripting mode. Katalon Studio allows reuse of these automated test scripts.
  • The tests recorded in Katalon Studio in one browser can be executed on multiple browsers (in parallel or sequential) speeding up the test cycle thus improving test coverage.
  • Using its well-structured framework and leveraging built-in features, Katalon Studio enables to provide high-quality applications. For example, Katalon supports parametrizing test objects dynamically which means users can control the object dynamically (sometimes the properties of an object might change due to business rules). The Test Objects can be handled in both manual modes and in script mode. Katalon provides systematic and neat UI with menus, tree views and tables so that one can organize well their test cases, objects and data files. This makes Katalon well-structured framework.
  • Features like Spy web utility is a great add-on in Katalon Studio. Using Spy web utility, object properties and locating method can be defined by the user themselves. This makes Katalon an intelligent tool.
  • While we must use other third-party libraries to generate reports in other automation tools, Katalon provides reports in graphical format. Also, it generates reports in HTML, CSV or PDF format.
  • Failures are reported with screenshots and logs.
  • Script creation time is very less when compared to other test automation tools.
  • Katalon Studio can be launched on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

Cons of Katalon Studio

  • Katalon Studio supports only Apache Groovy for test script creation. However, it supports Java libraries and Java-compatible languages for test script execution.
  • Katalon is not open source, it has closed source code leaving no option to the community to customize or use community-built packages.
  • Katalon Studio does not support distributed testing currently.
  • Katalon Studio is more focused on functionality testing and does not support any load or performance testing.
  • Katalon Studio supports only web, mobile and API testing and does not support automating desktop application.
  • Sometimes the tool just slows down and freezes, mobile automation testing takes even more time to record scripts.

Choosing a test automation tool depends on the testing requirement of an organization. If the organization is looking for a tool to test the functionality of their web/mobile applications, Katalon would be the right decision. Katalon Studio mainly focusses on functionality testing, but with very little focus on testing of design aspects like screen size, orientation etc.

Katalon: The future

As the tool is new and in early stages in the market and the features are still evolving, it sometimes throws some bugs and just gets stuck during test script execution. More updates and bug fix releases are expected in future to make it more stable and smooth-running tool.

Also, support to more scripting languages for test script creation would be a great plus.

However, with all the great benefits provided by the tool and with its simple UI, the tool has already won the hearts of testing engineers. In spite of the drawbacks, Katalon Studio is becoming an emerging tool for test automation and is gaining popularity in the software development industry. Overall Katalon is an amazing tool and has a great future.

– Susan

Posted on

Testing iOS & Android Applications: Our Thoughts on MonkeyTalk!

Mobile Application Market is gaining so much popularity now. With so many innovations happening in the field of mobile technology, mobile application testing is becoming a very essential part of the Software Development Life Cycle.

Excellent quality and highly efficient application have become a great challenge. To meet this challenge in a fruitful way, thorough and repeated testing of the system is required. Thorough testing can ensure that the application runs smoothly and meets user expectation. Effective test strategy and a combination of manual and automated testing tools are required to ensure a high-quality app.

Automated tests increase effectiveness and productivity and help maximum code coverage. Automated testing is sometimes considered as high cost, but if utilized effectively with balanced manual testing, the end result is overwhelming.

Why Test Automation?

There are many advantages to using Test Automation. It is fast and can be efficiently used for repeated testing. It can quickly find out the defects that occur due to the code changes thus, ensuring stability to the system. Repetition of tests can be effectively achieved using automated testing.

What is MonkeyTalk?

MonkeyTalk is one such automation tool used for efficient functionality testing of iOS and Android mobile applications. It is a cross-platform testing tool that record and playback functional test suites for iOS and Android applications running on real devices, emulators or simulator. Monkey Talk supports both native and hybrid iOS and Android apps.

MonkeyTalk has basically three components:

  • MonkeyTalk IDE – is an Eclipse-based tool that helps in the record, playback, manage, edit test suites for iOS and Android apps.
  • MonkeyTalk Agent – are the libraries that must be included in the mobile application under test. These Agents help the application to record and play MonkeyTalk commands.
  • MonekyTalk Scripts – describe different activities that need to be performed while testing.

Benefits of MonkeyTalk tool

  • A free, Open Source and simple to use tool.
  • Can be used for both iOS and Android applications.
  • Easy to understand and learn.
  • Testers need not be expert programmers to use the tool.
  • Support almost all iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod etc.) and Android devices, either tethered or over the network.
  • Unlike other automation tools, MonkeyTalk uses Object-based recording. Object-based scripting is more flexible and unbreakable when compared to Image-based scripting.
  • Touch and gesture-based operations are easily captured by this tool. Actions like swipe, drag, move etc. can be efficiently recorded and played back.
  • MonkeyTalk is a cross-platform tool. For logically identical apps, MonkeyTalk commands recorded in one OS can be played in another OS.

Limitations of MonkeyTalk

  • Mobile app under test must be instrumented with MonkeyTalk Agent which means access to source code is required or help from the developer is needed. Also, 3rd party apps (like Camera, Map etc.) cannot be tested as the source code is not available.
  • Currently, it can be used only for iPhone and Android applications testing.

Conclusion

MonkeyTalk is a simple yet tremendously powerful test automation tool for iOS and Android applications.  There are so many exciting things yet to happen in MonkeyTalk world and with all the upcoming features to test desktop apps, flex mobile apps, more reliable tests for game engines of mobile games etc., MonkeyTalk has a great future ahead of it!

– Susan B John

Posted on

Codeception: Efficient Key to Kill Bugs!

In 1985, Canada’s Therac-25 radiation therapy machine malfunctioned due to software bug and delivered lethal radiation doses to patients, leaving 3 people dead and critically injuring 3 others.

During the first Gulf War, an American Patriot Missile system in Saudi Arabia failed to intercept an incoming Iraqi Scud missile due to a software rounding error in calculation. The missile destroyed an American Army barracks and 28 soldiers dead, 100 injured.

In May of 1996, a software bug caused the bank accounts of 823 customers of a major U.S. bank to be credited with 920 million US dollars.

Do you realize, how Testing is vital?

Do you think, understanding a product and testing the same against functionality, performance, security, GUI and many others is an easy task?

We can implement new & better choices for a product’s quality and security. There are lots of ways to test our product.

The most accepted deal is unit testing. Also, we should need to write functional or acceptance tests as well. For all these Codeception is the right choice! The Codeception testing framework figures out all these levels of testing and it is a multi-featured testing framework for PHP.

Codeception can handle unit, functional, and acceptance testing of web applications.

Major types of Tests

It was evoked in November 2011 and released the first stable version 1.0 in January 2012. Codeception tries to simplify and combine the process of writing tests, plugging different testing suites with the use of modules and it opens the way to anyone to extend and sharpen it. Codeception is testing framework in which all tests are written in a single descriptive manner.

What variety of tests & How?

Major types of Tests covered and its Pros & Cons

Acceptance Test (WebGuy)

Acceptance testing can be performed by a non-technical person. That person can be your tester, manager or even client. It allows us to test our applications using the normal website viewing process i.e.; visit a webpage, fill in a form, and submit the form to see the desired result.

The difference is with Codeception, we don’t have to waste time going to the browser each time we want to test a new feature out, instead, we can just run our acceptance tests to see its passes or not.

Try a sample scenario;

Probably the first test you would want to run would be signing in. In order to write such a test, we still require basic knowledge of PHP and HTML.

This scenario can probably be read by non-technical people. Codeception can even ‘naturalize’ this scenario, converting it into plain English:

It can be done by command:

The Want To section describes your scenario in brief. The $I object is used to write all interactions. The methods of the $I object are taken from the PhpBrowser and Db modules. We assume that all am commands should describe the starting environment. The amOnPage command sets the starting point of a test to the /login page. With the PhpBrowser you can click the links and fill the forms. That will probably be the majority of your actions.

Functional Test (TestGuy)

We can check our application without running it on a server, this is what done on Functional tests. These tests are written in the same way as Acceptance tests with PhpBrowser module enabled. It’s tested by a technically advanced guy i.e., TestGuy. The TestGuy knows how the application works, passes different $_GET, $_POST and $_REQUEST variables to assure the functionality. Codeception can connect to numerous web frameworks Symfony2, Laravel4, Yii2, Zend Framework and others which support functional testing.

We can open a web page with amOnPage command.

We can click links to open web pages of the application.

Functional tests will perform much better if we use powerful frameworks. It allows us to access and manipulate their internal states and this helps our tests shorter and faster. On the other hand, if we do not use frameworks there is no practical reason to write functional tests.

Let’s allow our application tested by this technically advanced guy for better results.

Unit Test (CodeGuy)

“Unit” casually refers to low-level tests and the developer understands how and what is tested here, though some would say a better name is DeveloperTest. The person testing, CodeGuy, knows the internals of the application and tests database operations and anything else that might need proof of concept. Codeception provides some well-built tools to make your unit tests simpler and cleaner. Even inexperienced developers should understand what is tested and how.

We can start with generating a classical PHPUnit test by this command:

We can use another command to create Codeception-powered unit tests.

Both tests will create a new ExampleTest file located in tests/unit directory.

A test created by generate:test command will look like this:

This class has predefined _before and _after methods to start with. We can use them to create a tested object before each test and destroy it afterwards. All Codeception tests are written in a descriptive manner. We can easily catch it from the test body. Its aim is to make tests easy to read, easy to write and easy to debug.

After all, this is how the Codeception works and you should give it a try on yourself.

Go ahead, use Codeception skillfully.

(Reference: codeception.com)

– Jisna Mathew

Posted on

Mobile is Eating the World: Is Your Mobile App Tested Enough?

“Mobile Is Eating the World “

In November 2013, Benedict Evans, a well-respected and widely followed analyst, said: “Mobile is Eating the World”. He foresaw the new revolution in the business and predicted it most accurately.

Mobile devices have witnessed a phenomenal growth in the past few years and on this Mobile-Era, people use mobile in Work, Gaming, Networking, Business, Education, Shopping and all day-to-day activities.

What about Mobile Apps?

As we all know, Mobile apps are software applications structured to run on Smartphone, Tablets, Computers and other mobile devices.

Every organization needs to ensure that the application meets a high-quality level in all circumstances. I think effective testing will help to achieve this eminent quality bar. Hence excellent testing is essential for addressing the challenges and complexities of a mobile application.

Mobile app testing: Elemental checklist

We’re seeing the current booming stage of Mobile apps; it is necessary to test apps carefully in all possible ways to reach a larger audience. Suppose if you are going to test a mobile app, we need to ensure our business goals, customer expectations and also follow up to the updated industry practices as well. The most important thing while you are testing a mobile app or even the web-based app is to make a checklist and test accordingly.

The major checklist categories are as follows:

Mobile App Checklist Categories

Device-specific checks

  • Installation, Uninstallation, Re-Installation and Updations: Verify whether the application can be installed, uninstalled, re-installed and updated successfully.
  • Verify that buttons/ keys which have no un-defined function & unexpected behaviour on the app when activating.
  • Verify the app behave as designed/desired if the sound on the device is turned off.
  • Verify whether the app behaves as designed/desired if the device is in aeroplane mode?
  • Verify that the app is found in the app store? (Check after go-live)
  • Verify whether the app switches properly to different applications on the device through multitasking.
  • Verify whether all touch screen positions (buttons) working when a screen protector is used.

Network-specific checks

  • Does the app behave according to specification if connected to the internet through Wi-Fi, 3G, and 2G?
  • Verify the behaviour of the application when there is a Network problem.
  • User should get a proper error message like “Network error. Please try after some time”
  • Resource Downloading: Verify whether the app handles the ‘Pause’ & ‘Resume’ to downloads.
  • Does the app resume work when it gets back into network reach from outside reach of the network?
  • Does the app use standard network ports (Mail: 25, 143, 465, 993 or 995 HTTP: 80 or 443 SFTP: 22) to connect to remote services, as some providers block certain ports?

App-specific checks

  • Has the app been tested on a different type of devices and different versions of OS?
  • Integration: Does the app connect correctly to the different social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc).
  • Is downloading of the app prevented in case it’s bigger than the OS allows downloading when connected to cellular networks?
  • The app does not interfere with other apps when in background/multitasking mode
  • Check if any payment gateway occurs like PayPal, Chargify, etc.

App UI checks

  • The main function of the app should be apparent immediately. It should speak for itself.
  • If there is a long list of data to scroll through, provide a search option above the list.
  • If performance is slow, indicate a progress status icon (“Loading…”), preferably with a specific message
  • Users should be warned of the consequences of deleting a document
  • All inactive buttons were clearly distinguished from active buttons
  • Check for navigation, tabs, page scrolling etc.

Store-specific checks

  • The app should not access information on the device outside the app without the user’s permission
  • The app cannot download code to be installed without the users’ consent.
  • The app can only get new functionality by way of an upgrade through the app store.
  • An app can’t be a “trail”, “beta”, “demo” or “test” version.
  • You cannot mention other app platforms in your app (for instance: “Also available on android!”)
  • Functionality should be in sync with the functionality described in store.
  • The app can’t use the user’s location without permission.

Interrupt Handling

Call

  • User should be able to accept/reject a call without any problems.
  • Sound of application should stop when the user is on the line.
  • The application should resume after user rejects/ends a Call.

SMS, MMS

  • User should get a Message alert while the application is running.
  • Messages should be received without any problems.
  • The application should resume after receiving Message.

Alarm Handling

  • Alarm should work without any problems while the application is running.
  • The application should resume after the Alarm is turned off.

Other elements of mobile app testing

  • Other app notifications should not affect app performance.
  • Storage low: Check the app by filling the memory and emptying it, and then compare the application performance.
  • Battery low: Check the app performance on low battery.

Have a Happy Testing.

– Jisna Mathew

Posted on

Not Sure About the Quality of Your Mobile App? 5 Key Considerations

The success of your app is directly proportional to its quality. If a user’s initial experience is positive, then they’ll want to use the app again. Here are a few major points that if taken care of can help your app stand out from the crowd:

Visual Design and User Interaction

Few key areas that your app must have:

  • Alignment of buttons, labels, text etc.
  • Color combination used in header, footer, various elements, links etc.: Color combination can be used to focus user’s attention to important or actionable elements. Make sure not to highlight too many elements otherwise important elements might lose focus.
  • Spelling: Ensure that your app does not have any spelling mistakes. This is something that can also adversely affect your search ranking. Spelling and grammar play an important role in the evaluation of the quality of a site and its content.
  • Auto Focus on Input: This will speed up things because the user does not have to click on individual input fields to type. This may be implemented in input submission, search forms etc.

Speed

Does your app load quickly? Everybody expects a fast web experience. A fast site increases the overall quality of the app and increases user satisfaction.

Courtesy: www.techcrunch.com

A major reason that can severely affect the performance of your app is:

  • Size of individual files and images: Huge files and high-resolution images can take double the time to load and can drastically affect the performance of the app. Ensure that your high-resolution images are first compressed using default compressor and re-load these compressed images instead of uncompressed ones.

Scalability

Ask yourself following questions

  • How many visitors are accessing my app every day?
  • What is the peak number of visits that my app can support?
  • What areas of my app are most accessed by visitors?
  • What is the average response time of most popular pages of my app?
  • How efficiently can my hardware/software support the current volume of visitors?
  • How much infrastructure (hardware/software requirements) is required to handle these volumes?

Slow apps will frustrate the customer tempting them to leave soon.

Standards

Is your app built on provided standards? You have to understand who would be using your app. Identify their key tasks and key priorities that they want to accomplish through your site. Find out their goals and focus on how it relates to your business’ goals. Interacting with end users by conducting Surveys, User Testing sessions etc. can help you understand how closely user’s needs have been met by the app.

Also, your app must be built on a platform that is supported by standard skill sets across the organization and in the public domain. It must be flexible enough that is capable of integrating various systems for development and also the common set of functions and features must be sharable by different applications.

Security

Since mobile apps are running outside the security of your internal networks, you always have to make sure that the app is not vulnerable to security threats. One basic thing you can do is to encrypt traffic to the backend—at a minimum, by using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption. However, SSL by itself isn’t enough because of the nature of how mobile devices connect. One solution would be to rely on WebKit to handle SSL.

– Susan B. John