Four Tips for More Testable UI

Quick talk given at the 2019 Microsoft MVP summit during the ALM group's MVP2MVP sessions.

Transcript

1. Testable UIs
2. Or: How to help your test automation folks drink less
3. jim@GuidepostSystems.com @aJimHolmes
4. Fortune 10 client Java 6 Enterprise-ready components HP build and SCM tools “What’s a unit test?”
5. Thank you ET
6. Generalized Talk Ideas apply to all UI and automation tools
7. https://github.com/jimholmes/ Demo-Site
8. Two main problems in all UI testing
9. Finding Stuff
10. Async
11. Also SharePoint
12. Finding stuff == Locators
13. For Web, prefer: IDs CSS/JQuery-ish Name Custom Attributes
14. As a last resort: XPath
16. Create Good Locators
17. 0) Own Your HTML
21. FindElement.ById(“grid”)
24. 1) Understand your controls / frameworks
28. FindElement.ByCss( “some big stupid CSS string”)
29. Someone changes style
33. FindElement.ById( “update-btn”)
34. 2) Tweak dynamic data
36. Find elements by text content. Might not be granular enough.
39. No useful attributes
43. ID is position-based. Data changes, IDs change.
45. We own the code!
46. Is there some useful data in your objects?
52. FindElement.ById( contains(“Cobb”) )
53. “Name” isn’t all that useful. Got contract numbers? Project IDs? Other stuff? Find good metadata!
54. 3) Make complex async less painful
56. SharePoint
57. wait until expected condition 1 wait until expected condition 2 IF SOMETHING wait until expected condition 3 IF SOMETHING ELSE wait until expected condition 4 FINALLY wait until expected condition 342
58. We own the code!
59. Create “flags” when async is complete
65. Wait until flags.div(responseType=create) exists
66. 0) Add static IDs 1) Tweak controls 2) Use data for locators 3) Build flags/latches for complex async
68. https://github.com/jimholmes/ Demo-Site