Friday, September 2, 2016

WAAT 2.0 (BETA) available for use

Very excited to share that I, along with a few collaborators of WAAT did a workshop in vodQA, Pune on Sat, 27th Aug about Automating Web Analytics - Why? How?
We implemented the automation using WAAT.

Also, am very excited to announce that WAAT v2.0 BETA for Java is now available from the WAAT project.

The slides from the workshop are available here



Here are some details of the workshop:

Abstract

Do you know –
What is Web Analytics?
How does Web Analytics work?
Why is it important? How to test Web Analytics?
How can we ensure correct data is sent to the Web Analytics server, every time, for all the actions?
Attend this workshop to learn ‘What is Web Analytics?’ and why it is an extremely important aspect of Software Development & Testing for your product / service to succeed!
 
We will share some techniques for testing Web Analytics - in a non-automated way - and why that is very challenging and error-prone.
 
We will learn, via hands-on activity, about WAAT - Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework (https://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/search/label/waat) - an open-source solution, to automate validation of correct information / tags being sent to the Web Analytic server for different user actions as part of your regular Selenium-WebDriver Test Automation Framework.
 
Lastly, we will see how the impact of Analytics has changed dramatically with more adoption and spread of IoT (Internet of Things) and Big Data, and what we need to do to be part of the change, if not influencers of change!

Pre-Reqs

  • JDK 1.8
  • IDE (Eclipse / IntelliJ Idea / etc.)
  • Git (and add it to path)
  • Gradle 2.3 (and add it to path)
  • Firefox browser compatible with Selenium v2.53.1 (v46)
  • Also refer here for steps to run Appium tests using WAAT 

 

Sample Code

- Create a directory WAAT-Workshop and run
git clone git@github.com:anandbagmar/waat-sample-java.git
- If Using any existing framework: download WAAT-all-v2.0_BETA.jar
http://goo.gl/8bfyaJ
- To run sample code - from waat-sample-java directory - run the command -
gradle clean build 

Please reach out if you need help in using WAAT!

Monday, August 22, 2016

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action - Agenda, Abstract and workshop pre-requisites

vodQA-Pune - Less Talk, Only Action!

When? - Saturday, 27th Aug 2016, 8.30am - 5.30pm


Where? 

ThoughtWorks, Pune 
6th Floor, Binarius Building, 
Beside Sales Tax Office, Shastrinagar, Yerawada 
Pune, Maharashtra 411006 

Map: http://goo.gl/maps/KfuJG


What?

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! 
- Registration - 8.30am- 9.15am
- Welcome note - 9.15am


Agenda


Abstracts


1. Automating Web Analytics - Why? How?

Do you know –
What is Web Analytics?
How does Web Analytics work?
Why is it important? How to test Web Analytics?
How can we ensure correct data is sent to the Web Analytics server, every time, for all the actions?


Attend this workshop to learn ‘What is Web Analytics?’ and why it is an extremely important aspect of Software Development & Testing for your product / service to succeed!


We will share some techniques for testing Web Analytics - in a non-automated way - and why that is very challenging and error-prone.


We will learn, via hands-on activity, about WAAT - Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework (https://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/search/label/waat) - an open-source solution, to automate validation of correct information / tags being sent to the Web Analytic server for different user actions as part of your regular Selenium-WebDriver Test Automation Framework.


Lastly, we will see how the impact of Analytics has changed dramatically with more adoption and spread of IoT (Internet of Things) and Big Data, and what we need to do to be part of the change, if not influencers of change!

Pre-Reqs:

  • JDK 1.8
  • IDE (Eclipse / IntelliJ Idea / etc.)
  • Git
  • Firefox browser compatible with Selenium v2.53.1 (v46)
  • Also refer here for steps to run Appium tests using WAAT

2. Performance testing with Gatling for Beginners

Gatling is a server side performance testing tool. This workshop aims at giving introduction to Gatling and facilitating participants to write their first performance tests using Gatling.
> Brief intro to Gatling
> Using Postman to check stub server(created using mountebank for workshop)
> Write a sample test using gatling (pre set up machines are provided)

Pre-Reqs:
  • Participants should know at least one programming language well (Gatling tests are written in Scala. But participants need not know Scala)
  • Prior knowledge of what 'Performance testing is?' would help.

System requirements:

  • Homebrew (Package Manager for Mac)
  • Java 8
  • Gradle
  • Intellij IDE(Add Scala plug in)


3. Game of Test Automation

We are going to use a game to work out the WHY, WHAT and HOW of test automation within the context of consumers, application, skillset, mindset, etc.

Pre-Reqs: None


4. Security Testing - Operation Vijay

It is now the days of the web. All businesses move their applications online for their customers to use.
Many of these applications contain critical data of the customers such as credit card details, their personal details and so on. These data are very valuable. If these data fall in the wrong hands, they can have disastrous consequences.
Attacks on these systems can destroy the trust that the customers have for the business, they can cause great losses to the customers as well as the business, and so on.
The motivation behind attacks could be different like earning money, earning popularity, destroying a competitor company, etc.
No matter what the intention of the attack is, we need to develop safe applications and we need to know the various vulnerabilities and the consequences of our decisions when we develop applications.
Similarly, we should be aware of the various vulnerabilities before we test the applications so that we can try and exploit it during the testing phase and ensure better quality and safer applications.

Pre-Reqs:
  • Java
  • Modern Browser like Firefox/Chrome



5. Automate your Mobile tests with Appium

Introduction to Appium.
Appium design for Android and iOS
How to locate elements on android and iOS applications(Inspector).
Hands-on code snippet for android and iOS(Wordpress as sample app)
Generating reports (ExtentReports)
Evolve code snippet written above into a Page Object Framework.

Pre-Reqs:
  • IntelliJ
  • Java 1.8
  • MAVEN
  • Node
  • Adb - android debug bridge
  • Appium installed through node(npm install -g appium). Once the installation goes well. Hit command “appium” without quote and you should see Welcome message from appium.
  • Download & install Virtual Box from here
  • Download the basic version on Genymotion Android Emulator from here
    • Make sure you chose the basic version which is free for use(Go to individual tab).
    • You will be asked to create account with Genymotion before downloading the Genymotion package/installer
    • Confirm your account by pressing the link sent to your registered email id
    • Once you download, install Genymotion Android Emulator by following the instructions here
    • Once you install, open/start Genymotion and click on Add(+) link to add a new virtual device and press Signin and login
    • Select Android Version 6.0.0 and Device model Google Nexus 5 or 6. For more details follow the instruction mentioned here
    • Select from available option, Press Next and wait till download finishes.
    • Press start button & you should see emulator running.


6. Increase Automation to REST


What are web services and why we use them?
How to test a web service in multiple ways?
Increased familiarity with automation
Tools used : rest client, postman (mention alternatives), unirest JAVA and requests python

Pre-Reqs:
  • IntelliJ
  • MAVEN
  • CHROME and POSTMAN

7. Let's cook Cucumber


In this workshop we will be covering:
  • Advantages of BDD through cucumber example.
  • Framework setup along with JAVA and Selenium.
  • Writing one end to end test case in real world.
  • If time permits - will be covering basic Refactoring

Pre-Reqs:

  • IntelliJ
  • Java 1.8
  • Maven
  • Firefox 46

8. Mobile Automation using Espresso

Pre-Reqs:
  • Ensure you have Java 7 or beyond, installed on your box. If not you can download it from here 
  • Download & install Virtual Box from here
  • Download and install Android Studio from here
  • Also kindly download the android command line tools from the above link.
  • If you open android studio, it will ask you download & setup Android API and build tools which is useful for debug & compile our apps so please follow the steps. Ensure you have following things installed before you come for workshop and downloading it takes lot of time. 
    • Android SDK build-tools v23.0
    • Android API 5.0 or above
    • Install Android Support library from Extras. 
    • Please google in case of any issues while installing SDK
  • Download the basic version on Genymotion Android Emulator from here
    • Make sure you chose the basic version which is free for use(Go to individual tab).
    • You will be asked to create account with Genymotion before downloading the Genymotion package/installer
    • Confirm your account by pressing the link sent to your registered email id
    • Once you download, install Genymotion Android Emulator by following the instructions here
    • Once you install, open/start Genymotion and click on Add(+) link to add a new virtual device and press Signin and login 
    • Select Android Version 6.0.0 and Device model Google Nexus 5 or 6. For more details follow the instruction mentioned here
    • Select from available option, Press Next and wait till download finishes.
    • Press start button & you should see emulator running.
    • You’re all set for the event. ðŸ˜ƒ

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Agenda published for vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action!

The agenda for the upcoming vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! is now published.


NOTE: For this event, we will require the participants to get their laptops (and chargers).


When? 

Saturday, 27th Aug 2016, 8.30am - 5.30pm


Where? 

ThoughtWorks, Pune 
6th Floor, Binarius Building, 
Beside Sales Tax Office, Shastrinagar, Yerawada 
Pune, Maharashtra 411006 


Map: 

http://goo.gl/maps/KfuJG


What?

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! 
- Registration - 8.30am- 9.15am
- Welcome note - 9.15am


Topics covered: 

This vodQA will focus on hands-on activities. We are setting up a bunch of workshops for participants, please keep a watch for details and pre-requisites required for the workshops.

We will publish the agenda very soon in vodQA groups on 
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/vodqa/) and 
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4281359)

NOTE: For this event, we will require the participants to get their laptops (and chargers).

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Sharing the pain in Automating with Protractor & WebDriver

As mentioned in my earlier post titled "Taking Protractor to the next level", on 25th June 2016, Nikitha Iyer and I spoke in Selenium Conference 2016, Bangalore, India on "Sharing the pain in Automating with Protractor & WebDriver".

The video is finally available and I am now able to share (see below) all the details of the talk from one post.



Abstract

There is a saying ..."Sukh baatne se badhta hai, dukh baatne se kam hota hai", translated as - "happiness increases & sadness reduces on sharing with others".

We want to take this opportunity to share with our experiences - the good and the bad, in the journey of building a Test Automation framework for an AngularJS based application. 

We will learn, by a case study, what thought process we applied on the given context (product, team, skills, capabilities, long term vision) to come up with an appropriate Test Automation Strategy. This Test Automation strategy covered all aspects of Test Automation - Unit, Integration, UI - i.e. End-2-End tests (E2E).

Next, we will share how we went about narrowing-down, and eventually selecting a specific Tech Stack + Tools (Javascript / Jasmine / Protractor / Selenium-WebDriver) to accomplish the Test Automation for the product.

Lastly, we will share the challenges that came up in the implementation of the Test Automation, and how we overcame them. This will also include how we managed to get the tests running in Jenkins - a Continuous Integration tool. 
This discussion is applicable to all team members who are working on Test Automation!

P.S. We will be attempting to make a sample protractor-based automation framework available on github for anyone to use as a starting point for setting up protractor-based Test Automation framework.


Slides




Video

Friday, August 5, 2016

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action!

Very happy to announce the next edition of vodQA - 'Less Talk, Only Action!' with focus on hands-on activities

You are required to register & submit for this vodQA edition by filling in the below google form - https://goo.gl/forms/We3002DOlkQXmPsN2

There are limited seats for the workshops, available on first-come-first-served basis. 

NOTE: For this event, we will require the participants to get their laptops (and chargers).


When? 

Saturday, 27th Aug 2016, 8.30am - 5.30pm


Where? 

ThoughtWorks, Pune 
6th Floor, Binarius Building, 
Beside Sales Tax Office, Shastrinagar, Yerawada 
Pune, Maharashtra 411006 


Map: 

http://goo.gl/maps/KfuJG


What?

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! 
- Registration - 8.30am- 9.15am
- Welcome note - 9.15am


Topics covered: 

This vodQA will focus on hands-on activities. We are setting up a bunch of workshops for participants, please keep a watch for details and pre-requisites required for the workshops.

We will publish the agenda very soon in vodQA groups on 
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/vodqa/) and 
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4281359)

NOTE: For this event, we will require the participants to get their laptops (and chargers).

Agenda will be published soon.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Slides & Video from Test Data - Food for Test Automation Framework

As posted earlier, I spoke about "Test Data - Food for your Test Automation Framework!" at Selenium Conference 2016 in Bangalore on 24th June 2016 in front of a packed and a very interactive audience. What a great time it was!

The video for that session is finally available! I have updated the original post as well as linked the slides & video with this post as well.

Video



Slides



Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Any browsermob-proxy users facing issues with some requests not getting fired?

Is there anyone using browsermob-proxy who is having issues with some requests not getting fired?

I have integrated browsermob-proxy with my protractor tests. This works wonderfully when I run my tests from Mac (against local environment, or any other test environment).

However, when I run my tests from CI (agent is SUSE Enterprise 11.4) - my tests fail. 

I narrowed down the problem to the following scenario:

On some specific user action in the UI, there are a lot (>100) of requests fired from the browser in parallel (batches). There are a couple of scenarios like this in my application - and the test fails in all these cases.

Here is a screenshot of what the captured HAR file shows -



The same test works when I run this locally from Mac

Any idea how to fix this? Thank you in advance!

See this issue for more details - (https://github.com/lightbody/browsermob-proxy/issues/492)


Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Any WAAT (Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework) users out there?

It has been over 2 years since any update to WAAT - Java or Ruby. Over the years, I have realised, and also received a lot of thoughts / feedback from users of WAAT around where it helps, and what challenges exist. 

Also, given the widespread IoT & Big Data based work going on around the world, (Web) Analytics now plays a much bigger role in guiding business take better decisions. 

WAAT (again) fits in the grand scheme of things very nicely as a framework to automate the validation of correct reporting of tags to any Web Analytics solution provider.

Hence, its a no-brainer for me - it is high time I work on some of the feedback and limitations of WAAT to make it usable again!

At the recently concluded Selenium Conference 2016 held in Bangalore, India, I got an idea of how to overcome a lot of challenges (listed below) and pain in using WAAT. 


What's next?

To implement my new idea, this does mean a couple of things:

  • Existing plugins have limited use - and needs to be deleted.
  • A new plugin would need to be created - which may mean different set of APIs, and also different way to specify the test data.

Questions for you

Before I go ahead making these changes - I would like to get answers to the below questions (please add your answers directly in the comments):
  • Is anyone currently using WAAT? If yes - 
    • which version (Java / Ruby)?
    • which plugin
    • Using HTTP / HTTPS?
    • Which Web Analytic solution are you using? (ex: Google Analytics, WebTrends, etc?)
  • Would you be interested in using the new WAAT? If yes - 
    • Which language? Java / Ruby / JavaScript / Python / etc?
  • Would you like to contribute to implementing this new WAAT? If yes - contact me! :)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Current plugins available in WAAT:

  • Omniture Debugger (WAAT-Java)
    • Pros:
      • OS independent
      • Run using regular-test-user 
    • Cons:
      • Browser dependent - need to implement ScriptRunner for the UI-driver in use
      • Web-Analytic solution dependent - only for Adobe Marketing Clout / Omniture SiteCatalyst
  • HTTPSniffer (WAAT-Java, WAAT-Ruby)
    • Pros
      • Web-Analytic solution independent
      • Browser independent
      • UI-Driver independent
    • Cons
      • 3rd party libraries are OS dependent
      • HTTPs is not supported out-of-the-box
      • Run tests as "root"
  • JSSniffer (WAAT-Java, WAAT-Ruby)
    • Pros
      • Web-Analytic solution independent
      • Browser independent
      • HTTPs supported out-of-the-box
      • No 3rd party library dependency
    • Cons
      • Need to write JavaScript to get the URL from the browser context
      • UI-Driver dependent
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday, July 2, 2016

What is Web Analytics and how to Test it?

vodQA returned - this time with the theme - Testing Heuristics in ThoughtWorks, Hyderabad on 2nd July 2016.

Here I spoke about - "The What, Why and How of Web Analytics Testing". 

Abstract

Learn what is Web Analytics, why is it important, and see some techniques how you can test it manually and and also automate that validation. But just knowing about Web Analytics is not sufficient for business now.
There are new kids in town - IoT and Big Data - two of the most used and heard-off buzz words in the Software Industry!

With IoT, with a creative mindset looking for opportunities and ways to add value, the possibilities are infinite. With each such opportunity, there is a huge volume of data being generated - which if analyzed and used correctly, can feed into creating more opportunities and increased value propositions.

There are 2 types of analysis that one needs to think about.
1. How is the end-user interacting with the product? This will give some level of understanding into how to re-position and focus on the true value add features for the product.
2. With the huge volume of data being generated by the end-user interactions, and the data being captured by all devices in the food-chain of the offering, it is important to identify patterns from what has happened, and find out new product / value opportunities based on usage patterns.

Slides


Video

PS: Apologies for the video quality - I am not seen very clearly - but the slides are bright & clear, and so is the audio - so the important aspects are covered!




Pictures









Feedback


My Takeaway & Learning

- The attendees did not have much exposure to Web Analytics, and how it works. I should spend more time in speaking about that
- I should spend more time in challenges and potential solutions related to Big Data & IoT
- A lot of people are interested in WAAT - that could be a separate, more detailed discussion