How do I optionally slow down cucumber (ruby) tests? - ruby

I have tried googling, but had no luck. Maybe I just don't know the terms to search for...
Recently we made some changes to the environment, and now tests that used to run without issue kill the service. We are working to find out why that is happening... but in the meantime, is there a way I could pass a CLI command or something to slow down the tests on demand? (or vice versa, run at full speed on demand) Or maybe build something into a rake task?
I know I could easily add an after hook to sleep between scenarios, but I want to be able to run the tests full blast as well while we are trying to sort out the issue. Adding an after hook would require editing several files every time we wanted to turn the throttling on or off.
UPDATE:
decided to try adding this to env.rb and I think it might work, although it feels crude. If you have other suggestions I would love to hear them. This is just a temporary fix though, once we figure out what is up with the environment we do need to go back and add a more elegant way of slowing tests down when needed, perhaps through the http client.
After do
if ENV['SLOW'].eql? 'yes'
sleep(3)
#logger.info '******* Waiting 3 seconds before running next scenario *******'
end
end

Related

Run all specs from command line in cypress

How can I run all specs from command line in cypress? I have 3 spec files which depends on each other and browser shouldn't reset after each test.
"But when you click on "Run all specs" button after cypress open, the Test Runner bundles and concatenates all specs together..."
I want to accomplish the exact same thing through the command line.
You might not like this answer, but you're going head first against the wall there.
One of goals in pretty much any testing project is making your tests completely independent from one another, and there's plenty of reasons to do so, with just a few being:
You don't care if one test failed and the chain is broken.
Similarly, changing/updating one test case doesn't break a chain.
You can run your tests in parallel, which is a serious point in any projects that plan to scale.
As far as I know, this browser/runner reset after each spec file is desired behavior from cypress side to make parallelization possible (but I can't remember where I read it), so I don't think there's any workaround for your problem.

Is there a recommended debugging strategy for E2E automation tests?

What is the best elegant approach for debugging a large E2E test?
I am using TestCafe automation framework and currently. I'm facing multiple tests that are flaky and require a fix.
The problem is that every time I modify something within the test code I need to run the entire test from the start in order to see if that new update succeeds or not.
I would like to hear ideas about strategies regard to how to debug an E2E test without losing your mind.
Current debug methods:
Using the builtin TestCafe mechanism for debugging in the problematic area in the code and try to comment out everything before that line.
But that really doesn't feel like the best approach.
When there are prerequisite data such as user credentials,url,etc.. I manually Declare those again just before the debug().
PS: I know that tests should be focused as much as possible and relatively small but this is what we have now.
Thanks in advance
You can try using the flag
--debug-on-fail
This pauses the test when it fails and allows you to view the tested page and determine the cause of the fail.
Also use test.only to to specify that only a particular test or fixture should run while all others should be skipped
https://devexpress.github.io/testcafe/documentation/using-testcafe/command-line-interface.html#--debug-on-fail
You can use the takeScreenshot action to capture the existing state of the application during the test. Test Café stores the screenshots inside the screenshots sub-directory and names the file with a timestamp. Alternatively, you can add the takeOnFails command line flag to automatically capture the screen whenever a test fails, so at the point of failure.
Another option is to slow down the test so it’s easier to observe when it is running. You can adjust the speed using the - speed command line flag. 1 is the fastest speed and 0.01 the slowest. Then you can record the test run using the - video command line flag, but you need to set up FFmpeg for this.

How to use rspec to test screen scraping?

I'm writing a site that is going to rely a lot on screen scraping. Because I know screen scraping is prone to breaking I'd like to get notified somehow that there is a problem.
The solution that I think will work is to write an rspec test for each site I want to support. The test will open a few remote pages from each site and compare them with the output I expect from my scraper. I'd like to also run the same tests on locally cached copies so I know if my code changes broke the scraper or if the remote site changed. I'd like to somehow run these tests once a day and notify me of any problems.
Eventually I'd like to make this a gem because it's a reoccurring problem for me. I tend to do a lot of scraping and it would be nice to know when things break.
So my problem is I'm relatively new to writing tests for my code and I have no clue what the best way to set this up is.
Take a look at the VCR gem, which will let you get local copies of various pages you want to test, while having the ability to refresh them every so often, as well as testing against live pages.

Best way to test a Delphi application

I have a Delphi application that has many dependencies, and it would be difficult to refactor it to use DUnit (it's huge), so I was thinking about using something like AutomatedQA's TestComplete to do the testing from the front-end UI.
My main problem is that a bugfix or new feature sometimes breaks old code that was previously tested (manually), and used to work.
I have setup the application to use command-line switches to open-up a specific form that could be tested, and I can create a set of values and clicks needed to be done.
But I have a few questions before I do anything drastic... (and before purchasing anything)
Is it worth it?
Would this be a good way to test?
The result of the test should in my database (Oracle), is there an easy way in testcomplete to check these values (multiple fields in multiple tables)?
I would need to setup a test database to do all the automated testing, would there be an easy way to automate re-setting the test db? Other than drop user cascade, create user,..., impdp.
Is there a way in testcomplete to specify command-line parameters for an exe?
Does anybody have any similar experiences.
I would suggest you plan to use both DUnit and something like TestComplete, as they each serve a different purpose.
DUnit is great for Unit Testing, but is difficult to use for overall application testing and UI testing.
TestComplete is one of the few automated testing products that actually has support for Delphi, and our QA Engineer tells me that their support is very good.
Be aware though that setting up automated testing is a large and time-consuming job. If you rigourously apply unit testing and auomated UI testing, you could easily end up with more test code than production code.
With a large (existing) application you're in a difficult situation with regards to implementing automated testing.
My recommendation is to set up Unit Testing first, in conjunction with an automated build server. Every time someone checks anything in to source control, the Unit Tests get run automatically. DO NOT try to set up unit tests for everything straight up - it's just too big an effort for an existing application. Just remember to create unit tests whenever you are adding new functionality, and whenever you are about to make changes. I also strongly suggest that whenever a bug is reported that you create a unit test that reproduces the bug BEFORE you fix it.
I'm in a similar situation. (Large app with lots of dependencies). There is almost no automated testing. But there is a big wish to fix this issue. And that's why we are going to tackle some of the problems with each new release.
We are about to release the first version of the new product. And the first signs are good. But it was a lot of work. So next release we sure need some way to automate the test process. That's why I'm already introducing unit tests. Although due to the dependencies, these are no real unit tests, but you have to start somewhere.
Things we have done:
Introduced a more OO approach, because a big part the code was still procedural.
Moved stuff between files.
Eliminated dependencies where possible.
But there is far more on the list of requirements, ensuring enough work for the entire team until retirement.
And maybe I'm a bit strange, but cleaning up code can be fun. Refactoring without unit tests is a dangerous undertaking, especially if there are a lot of side effects. We used pair programming to avoid stupid mistakes. And lots of test sessions. But in the end we have cleaner code, and the amount of new bugs introduced was extremely low.
Oh, and be sure that you know this is an expensive process. It takes lots of time. And you have to fight the tendency to tackle more than one problem in a row.
I can't answer everything, as I've never used testcomplete, but I can answer some of those.
1 - Yes. Regression testing is worth it. It's quite embarrassing to you as a developer when the client comes back to you when you've broken something that used to work. Always a good idea to make sure everything that used to work, still does.
4 - Oracle has something called Flashback which lets you create a restore point in the database. After you've done your testing you can just jump back to this restore point. You can write scripts to use it too, FLASHBACK DATABASE TO TIMESTAMP (FEB-12-2009, 00:00:00);, etc
We're looking at using VMWare to isolate some of our testing.
You can start from a saved snapshot, so you always have a consistent environment and local database state.
VMWare actions can be scripted, so you can automatically install your latest build from a network location, launch your tests and shut down afterwards.
Is it worth it?
Probably. Setting up and maintaining tests can be a big job, but when you have them, tests can be executed very easily and consistently. If your project is evolving, some kind of test suite is very helpful.
Would this be a good way to test?
I would say that proper DUnit test suite is better first step. However if you have large codebase which is not engineered for testing, setting up functional tests is even bigger pain than setting up GUI tests.
The result of the test should in my database (Oracle), is there an easy
way in testcomplete to check these values (multiple fields in multiple tables)?
TestComplete has ADO and BDE interface. Or you can use OLE interface in VBScript to access everything that's available.
Is there a way in testcomplete to specify command-line parameters for
an exe?
Yes.
One way to introduse unittesting in an (old) application could be to have a "Start database" (like the "Flashback" feature described by Rich Adams).
The program som unittest using DUnit to control the GUI.
Se the "GUI testing with DUnit" on http://delphixtreme.com/wordpress/?p=181
Every time the test is started by restoring to "Start database", because, then a known set of data, can be used.
I would need to setup a test database to do all the automated
testing, would there be an easy way to
automate re-setting the test db?
Use transactions: perform a rollback when the test completed. This should revert everything to the initial state.
Recommended reading:
http://xunitpatterns.com/

Is there a gui for nosetests

I've been using nosetests for the last few months to run my Python unit tests.
It definitely does the job but it is not great for giving a visual view of what tests are working or breaking.
I've used several other GUI based unit test frameworks that provide a visual snap shot of the state of your unit tests as well as providing drill down features to get to detailed error messages.
Nosetests dumps most of its information to the console leaving it the developer to sift through the detail.
Any recommendations?
You can use rednose plugin to color up your console. The visual feedback is much better with it.
I've used Trac + Bitten for continuous integration, it was fairly complex setup and required substantial amount of time to RTFM, set up and then maintain everything but I could get nice visual reports with failed tests and error messages and graphs for failed tests, pylint problems and code coverage over time.
Bitten is a continuous integration plugin for Trac. It has the master-slave architecture. Bitten master is integrated with and runs together with Trac. Bitten slave can be run on any system that communicate with master. It would regularly poll master for build tasks. If there is a pending task (somebody has commited something recently), master will send "build recipe" similar to ant's build.xml to slave, slave would follow the recipe and send back results. Recipe can contain instructions like "check out code from that repository", "execute this shell script", "run nosetests in this directory".
The build reports and statistics then show up in Trac.
I know this question was asked 3 years ago, but I'm currently developing a GUI to make nosetests a little easier to work with on a project I'm involved in.
Our project uses PyQt which made it really simple to start with this GUI as it provides all you need to create interfaces. I've not been working with Python for long but its fairly easy to get to grips with so if you know what you're doing it'll be perfect providing you have the time.
You can convert .UI files created in the PyQt Designer to python scripts with:
pyuic4 -x interface.ui -o interface.py
And you can get a few good tutorials to get a feel for PyQt here. Hope that helps someone :)
I like to open a second terminal, next to my editor, in which I just run a loop which re-runs nosetests (or any test command, e.g. plain old unittests) every time any file changes. Then you can keep focus in your editor window, while seeing test output update every time you hit 'save' in your editor.
I'm not sure what the OP means by 'drill down', but personally all I need from the test output is the failure traceback, which of course is displayed whenever a test fails.
This is especially effective when your code and tests are well-written, so that the vast majority of your tests only take milliseconds to run. I might run these fast unit tests in a loop as described above while I edit or debug, and then run any longer-running tests manually at the end, just before I commit.
You can re run tests manually using Bash 'watch' (but this just runs them every X seconds. Which is fine, but it isn't quite snappy enough to keep me happy.)
Alternatively I wrote a quick python package 'rerun', which polls for filesystem changes and then reruns the command you give it. Polling for changes isn't ideal, but it was easy to write, is completely cross-platform, is fairly snappy if you tell it to poll every 0.25 seconds, doesn't cause me any noticeable lag or system load even with large projects (e.g. Python source tree), and works even in complicated cases (see below.)
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/rerun/
A third alternative is to use a more general-purpose 'wait on filesystem changes' program like 'watchdog', but this seemed heavyweight for my needs, and solutions like this which listen for filesystem events sometimes don't work as I expected (e.g. if Vim saves a file by saving a tmp somewhere else and then moving it into place, the events that happen sometimes aren't the ones you expect.) Hence 'rerun'.

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