1. Presented at PyconSG on 14th June 2013

2. ● Coastal GeoScientist and Civil Engineer
● 10+ years in Software Quality Assurance
and Functional Testing
● HP Certified Professional in Quality Center
● Lead Quality Assurance at Vistaprint
● Contributor to Holmium Core
● http://sajnikanth.com
About me

3. ● Background to black-box testing
● Manual vs Automated testing
● Why python?
● selenium and other uses
● Lessons Learned
Contents

4. Black-box tester?

5. Source - http://innovation.lv/ino2/publications/leonardo_manual/en/www.innosupport.net/webhelp/wso/index.cfm@fuseactionlearnl_id3808pl_id3554.htm
● Prepare test plans and test cases
● Test the application
● Find and record defects
● Re-test
● Regression test
Black-box tester's task list

6. Qualities of a good black-box tester

7. How many test cases do you see?
What's the problem?
5 * 3 * 3 * 2 * 2 = 180
Test Cases * Browsers * Countries * Languages * Environment
Time to test on a few platforms?
Good luck sucker!!

8. ● Repetitive manual regression = boring
● Low test coverage
● No common language
● Ever growing Test Suites
● Testing becomes a bottleneck
● QA bites the bullet
What's the problem?
Source -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

9. ● "Fail fast; fail often" - Martin Fowler
● Integration / Functional / Performance
● Building block for continuous integration and
deployment
● Higher Return on investment
Automated testing

10. QTP to the rescue
● Expensive
● Proprietary
● Windows-centric
● "Ageing" community
● Familiar (HP Certified after all)
● Popular
● Supports Record and Play
I think it is time for QTP to die - http://paulhammant.com/blog/die-qtp-die.html/

11. python?
● Easy to setup
● Readable code (easy for beginners)
○ forced indentations; better for the team
○ consistency
● open source; active community / library

12. OK; Getting back to the problem
5 * 3 * 3 * 2 * 2 = 180
Test Cases * Browsers * Countries * Languages * Environment
Time to test on a few platforms?

13. ● Record and Play (Firefox)
● Multiple browsers
● Mobile Support
● Multiple ways to locate an element
● Screenshots
● ...
Selenium Features

14. ● Test APIs
● Write scripts for simple UI tests
● Create test data
● Test Suites
● Performance Testing
● ...
Working with python

15. Lessons learned

16. Lessons learned
Web dev changes conventions - intrologin-name,
intrologin-password etc.

17. 1. Use Page Objects
PageObjects by Adam Goucher -
http://www.pushtotest.com/create-robust-selenium-tests-with-pageobjects
Lessons learned

19. Lessons learned

20. 2. Wait instead of Sleep
Explicit and Implicit Waits -
http://docs.seleniumhq.org/docs/04_webdriver_advanced.jsp
Lessons learned

21. 3. pick
nose is nicer testing for python -
https://nose.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
● Organize tests better
● Run selected tests
● Plugin Architecture
● List all tests
● Test Runner (less boilerplate code)
Lessons learned

22. ● Run 30 tests on Firefox
○ about 12 minutes
Lessons learned
● Run 30 tests on a Headless browser
○ about 7 minutes

23. 4. use headless
● step toward Continuous Integration
○ jenkins / teamcity / Travis CI are phantomjs-ready
● better performance than Firefox / Chrome
● works without GUI
○ no interruption
○ ec2 micro instance
○ vagrant
Lessons learned

24. ● https://holmiumcore.readthedocs.org
● plugin for nosetests
○ developed by Ali-Akber Saifee
■ http://ali.indydevs.org/
● Page object definitions made easy
● Other options:
○ Specify environment
○ Select browsers
○ Run tests remotely
Introducing Holmium

25. nosetests tests/vistamobi_tests.py
--with-holmium
--holmium-browser=firefox
--holmium-environment=staging
--holmium-useragent=iphone

26. View this presentation from here -
http://sajnikanth.com
How many software testers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None; testers just report that the room is dark.
Questions?