Introducing SerenityJS

As an agile testing services company, sharing Agile testing practice is the key to success. Before starting this article, we would like to thank Jan Molak who introduced SerenityJS to us.

Let’s start with the definition:

Serenity/JS is a next generation acceptance testing JavaScript library.

Features of SerenityJS:

 
We were surprised when we read about ScreenPlay pattern. Maybe we are late. However, this is the concept answered our question.

The question is:

How can a business person understand and verify the logic which is implemented inside a step definition?

How the ScreenPlay pattern addresses the problem? The Screenplay Pattern is a user-centred model which allows you to write automated tests with the defined user roles and persona.

It is impossible for you to understand ScreenPlay pattern without knowing what user roles and Persona is.

User roles:
A user role is a collection of defining attributes that characterize a population of users and their intended interactions with the system. Consider we are building an e-learning application. Before writing user stories, we need to brainstorm to identify, consolidate and condense user roles.

Defined user roles for an e-learning application:

Persona:
A persona is an imaginary representation of a user role. Creating a persona requires more than just adding a name to a user role. A persona should be described sufficiently that everyone on the team feels like they know the persona.

Persona Example:

Anna works as an instructor, and she creates students, assigns assignments to her students, and views reports of students. Anna is good at teaching basics of computer.

Reference: User Stories Applied

We hope you are clear with User roles and Persona. Let’s see how these are represented in Gherkin and Step Definition using Serenity/JS.

Feature: Add new items to the todo list

  As James (the just-in-time kinda guy)
  I want to capture the most important things I need to do
  So that I don’t leave so many things until the last minute

  Scenario: Adding the first todo item

    Given that James has an empty todo list
     When he adds Buy some milk to his list
     Then his to-do list should contain Buy some milk  

In the above feature, James is the persona.

let james = Actor.named('James');  

Create an actor in step definition

this.When(/^he adds (.*?) to his list$/, (name: string) => {
    return james.attemptsTo(
        AddATodoItem.called(itemName)
    );
});  

James attempts to add todo item. Now anyone can understand your step definition. You can find more details in the following link Serenity/JS and do not miss to watch the introductory video of Serenity/JS.