During the early days, record and play was popular to create automation scripts. However, in the modern era, it goes without saying that you have to be highly skilled in test automation scripting. Some automation testing tools claim that it supports code-less automation. But in reality, there is no substantial fact to prove that code-less automation is a game-changer and that no coding knowledge is required to create test automation scripts. In this blog article, you will learn why coding skills are a key to kick start your test automation career and what are all the coding concepts you should know to begin with.
JavaScript & HTML Basics
Basic knowledge in JavaScript and HTML is a must-have skill for any automation tester. If you have sufficient knowledge about a web element’s HTML tag & attributes, and its associated JavaScript events, you can create a robust automation test script.
Let’s say you want to fill a date using the calendar field, there is no need for you to automate the date selection in the calendar field. Rather, you can fill the date directly using the Selenium JavaScriptExecutor instead of writing complex code snippets.
In addition to that, you should also know what the HTML DOM tree structure is, and how the page components are divided using DIV tags. So it is evident here that basic knowledge in JavaScript and HTML is very crucial when you are at the budding stages of your test automation career.
Object-Oriented Programming
We know for a fact that it is not possible to create an automation test script without a class. So it is mandatory for you to know the below-mentioned object-oriented programming concepts prior to starting your test automation career.
– Constructor
– Object Creation
– Method Overloading & Overriding
– Inheritance
– Getters & Setters
As a leading automation test company, we make sure we provide the best in class programming and tool level training to all our resources before they are inducted into any project. Make sure you pour your heart and soul into the process as it is vital for you to know the real purpose of each concept and how it is implemented in test automation while learning object-oriented programming. One of the best sources to learn OOPS concepts is the multiple GitHub projects which are public. You will be able to learn how OOPS concepts are used in test automation and fly high in your test automation career.
Coding Design Patterns
Page Object Pattern is a fundamental part of programming that every test automation engineer will know about. However, there are a lot of other coding design patterns which you can use in test automation to avoid boilerplate codes.
Singleton Pattern
When it comes to test automation, you can use the Singleton pattern for DB connections. Once a DB connection is established for query execution, there will be no need for you to open a new DB connection to execute another query if you use the Singleton pattern.
Factory Pattern
Factory Pattern allows you to create an object from one of the several possible classes that share a common superclass. By following this pattern, you can hide the instantiation logic and avoid writing complex logic inside the ‘if else’ blocks.
Strategy Pattern
Using the Strategy pattern, you will be able to implement the methods’ logic of multiple classes that share a common interface and objective and call the methods in one place instead of calling all the implemented methods of the classes for different logics in multiple places.
Dependency Injection
There will be a need to create multiple page object classes for test automation. If you want to create objects for the page object classes only once and serve the created objects in all the tests, then you need to know how to set up the Dependency Injection pattern in your Framework.
Though Test Automation Design patterns are advanced concepts, you should at least know the basics of them before starting your test automation career.
Exception Handling
You have to keep in mind the fact that you will never handle exceptions in your automated tests. The reason behind it is that if a script throws an exception, it will be marked as a failure and the exception details will be required for troubleshooting. However, if you get into the framework and other automation library development, you have to catch exceptions because libraries are not tests. So make sure to avoid unwanted exceptions. It would be better if you report them in log files that are related to test automation frameworks.
Assertion Libraries
Assertions are important to report whether an automated test case has passed or not. There are several assertion libraries available in the market and so you should learn how to use assertions in your tests. Apart from that, you should also know that assertion chaining allows you to write complex validations in a single readable line.
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Conclusion
As an Automation Testing Services Company, we train our resources in all the aspects of coding in order to create robust test automation scripts and frameworks. As stated earlier, even with the introduction of tools that claim codeless automation, there is just no path to automation without coding. Simply put, you can’t ignore coding and do automation testing as coding will have a huge impact on your test automation career.
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