Automation testing has almost become an essential practice in the modern application development and testing segment. This is because the thousands of elements that are present in modern complex applications are almost impossible to test without the involvement of automation test cases. The user interface elements of an application play a vital role in improving user interaction and end-user satisfaction with the app. Therefore, app development companies need to provide stable performance in all the elements present in the UI of an application. During the initial years of the app development market, the developers could only use Selenium for automating the test cases. However recently many alternatives such as Cypress and playwright have arrived in the market.
Cypress.IO is one of the best tools to automate test cases in the modern environment. So, in this article, we are going to discuss some of the reasons that can justify the use of Cypress for automating the UI test files. We will analyze a few best practices that can assist the developers to utilize the most out of these test cases.
Understanding Cypress
Cypress is one of the modern test automation tools that is based on a node.JS architecture. This tool allows the automation testers to write the test cases using either the typescript or the JavaScript programming languages. Cypress is one of the best industry choices for writing functional and end-to-end test cases. Cypress has managed to gain a lot of popularity in a short time due to its simple and easy-to-use interface. The official website of Cypress has all the necessary documents to understand the working mechanism of this automation testing tool. This website also has various sample cases that explain the working of multiple features available with Cypress. The developers can also integrate other external libraries and plugins to further elevate the usefulness of the Cypress automation testing tool.
Now it is time to understand two of the most important features available with the Cypress automation testing tool:
- The automatic wait feature helps the developers to pause a test case until the completion of the previous one. It is a very important feature considering the complex nature of the modern application framework. This is because all the elements present in modern applications are interdependent and require the proper functioning of each other. So, if the developers initiate the testing of an element before they verify the functioning of the previous one, the system will display wrong error messages like a false positive or false negative. Therefore, these errors can massively reduce the dependability of the final Test result.
- Cypress uses an intelligent framework that understands multiple testing requirements. For instance, the intelligent framework of Cypress can understand that the developers will require to initiate the test cases after successfully saving them. Due to this feature, the framework will automatically show the execute button by the side of the test case after the user creates and saves it. With the help of this feature, the application developer can save a lot of time during the development process as they do not have to manually execute the test cases.
Some of the Most Important Components of the Cypress.io Tool
Since we are on the topic of Cypress automation testing, the new developers need to get themselves accustomed to all the major components present in this tool. This is because the developers will find themselves using these tools quite frequently while performing automation testing using Cypress. They are as follows:
- The page object is a method that is responsible for listing all the methods that will bind the application with the business logic. This method will also help the automation testers to interact with all the elements present in the web application.
- The spec file is responsible for storing the IT{} block that will in turn keep track of all the testing plans. This block has the responsibility of initiating the testing processes and executing them on the respective elements in a web application. It {} block also consists of the describe method which in turn contains vital sets of data that are important during the application testing process.
- The Page Selector file is one of the most important components that the developers will be using during the UI automation testing processes. This is because this file consists of the data regarding the location of all the UI elements present in an application. The system will use this location to call the UI elements for the respective testing processes.
- The constants file will consist of the vital testing constants that are important for the application testing. This constant will help the developers to keep track of various data sources that are important for smoothly executing the testing of the web elements.
Need for Automating UI Test Cases
The user interface elements of a web application have a critical role in ensuring that the app stands up to the expectations of the end users. The UI element of the web application also consists of multiple media elements like videos and photos. Therefore, the developers must ensure that all of these elements are interactable and serve the purpose that they’re intended to. The UI testing process also becomes important when the application undergoes a lot of updating processes to add new features. This is because one of the common phenomena in the app development industry is that new elements often end up breaking the performance of the old ones. Since the UI testing elements often end up being repetitive, it can benefit a lot from automation testing.
It is one of the major reasons why industry experts suggest that application testers initiate automation testing in the UI test cases. While automating UI test cases, one of the best practices is to divide all the UI elements into smaller sections known as units. Separating the elements of an application into smaller segments will help the app developers to increase the simplicity of the test cases.
Reasons to Use Cypress.io for UI Automation Test Cases
In this article, we tried to discuss some of the major reasons why the developer should use Cypress for initiating automation test cases. Now, let us divert our focus toward discussing the specific reasons for using Cypress.IO to initiate UI automation test cases.
Due to the automatic wait feature available with Cypress, the developers do not have to wait any extra time for implementing explicit or implicit wait in the application. This feature was one of the major drawbacks available with selenium. Therefore, most developers prefer to use Cypress for initiating UI automation test cases. This feature is also available for adding the commands and assertions in other testing processes as well.
Cypress allows the developer to verify and control the behavior of server responses. This is a very important feature as it helps the app developers to customize the test cases and improve the accuracy of the test results. For this purpose, the developers can use various tools like Stubs, Clocks, and Spies. Using these tools, the automation testers can also control other features of a web application like functions or timers. This is a very important feature considering that all web applications have some form of uniqueness as they serve a different segment of the user base.
Cypress can simulate user interactions to check how the web application deals with these forms of inputs. For instance, while using Cypress the developers can use several commands to simulate a single click, right-click, left-click, or even double-click on specific elements of a web application. This tool also has a special feature known as automatic scrolling. Using this feature the developers can ensure that the element that is being tested is always available on the screen for interactions like clicking. Having the element visible is very important to ensure the accuracy of the test results.
Role of Tools and Platforms in Cypress Automation
There are hundreds of tools and platforms that are easily available in the open market. Each of these tools and platforms aim to serve a different purpose in the application testing lifecycle. Moreover, certain platforms help the developers to introduce additional features during the application testing process. For reference, cloud testing help developers to save a fortune by eliminating the hassle of maintaining a on-site device testing lab. While using these platforms, the developers can conduct the testing processes on multiple cloud servers that are accessible around the world.
The developers can access all the devices present on these servers by paying only a minimum license fee. Let us learn more about cloud testing by using LambdaTest as our reference point:
While introducing LambdaTest, we can say it is a cloud-integrated platform to execute safe cross-browser test cases on modern web apps. Cross-browser testing is a modern industry-standard for ensuring that you provide the best applications to your customers. This is because these test cases help the developers to ensure that the application is stable even on shifts in the operating system version or browser version. LambdaTest has various advanced features like parallel test execution to improve the accuracy of the test cases. While executing Cypress test files, LambdaTest can execute the testing process on more than fifty different browsers at the same time. LambdaTest generates highly accurate test results by combining results from simulators, emulators, and multiple real devices at the same time. Using LambdaTest, the developers can also verify the proper functioning of local host servers and web pages.
The Conclusion
So, we can easily justify that Cypress is one of the best available options to automate the user interface test cases. However, the application developers need to have the proper idea of Cypress automation testing to utilize the full potential of this tool. In this article, we discussed all the major factors that the developers must keep in mind before initiating the Cypress test cases. It is also very important for app creation companies to spread adequate knowledge regarding the essence of automation testing and the use of proper automation tools. This is because many experts believe that automation testing will dominate the entire application development market in the future. Lastly, automation testers need to choose the correct tool or platform that can serve the demands of their development project.
