How to make testing on different environmets? - visual-studio-2010

Question

We have a web application. We want to run the same test across multiple environments to ensure everything is still working correctly.
UAT -> STAGING -> PRODUCTION
We want to run these tests after each deploy to each environment. Each environment has as a different URL. I have created three test plans in MTM. I have added test cases for only UAT environment and I have created an environment in Lab Center. By the way, I have recorded test cases with coded ui test and I have associated them for automated testing (only UAT environment). How can I do testing other environments. How can I achieve this without changing the recording or code everytime? Thanks,

Answer 1

If you generated the tests using the default Test Builder, you can try to write something like this on your [CodedUITest] class:
[TestInitialize()]
public void MyTestInitialize()
{
// the url I could read from a config file
string url = "http://stackoverflow.com/";
this.UIMap.RecordedMethodXXParams.XXChWindowUrl = url;
}
Where RecordedMethodXXParams and XXChWindowUrl are auto generated. You can check the generated names in the UIMap class.

Answer 2

This is too late on this but just in case it helps readers.
You do not need to create multiple test plans or test suites in MTM for this. What you need is, the builds to be smart enough to choose the right config based on the target environment. As Ciaran suggested you could use xml config that have all the details of each environment and then you write some filtering code to filter out the details based on the target environment but maintainability could become a bit of pain. Ideally you would like to have one xml layout for app.config and that will load different values for each config based on the target environment. ie xml in app.config is transformed based on the target environment.
SlowCheetah does exactly that for you. a bit of reading and understanding is required to implement this.
After you have all the transforms in place, use the "Configuration Manager" in visual studio to describe all the target environments. You can find it in the dropdown next to your green start/run button in visual studio.
Create a separate CI build (ie trigger = checkin) of the test code (ie coded UI tests project) targeting each test environment using the Process>Build>Configurations section of the build definition.
Create a lab test run build (ie one using LabDefaultTemplate) for each target environment that uses the same test suite from the test manager. make sure that each of the build maps to the corresponding CI build in the build section of the process workflow wizard.
Queue away all the builds and you ll have all the builds running together in all the environments simultaneously and each of them smartly picking up the right configs.

Answer 3

You will probably need to edit the Coded UI tests to change the browser URL which gets launched when the tests run. When I performed automated Coded UI tests on different browsers, when the tests started, I made it read from an XML configuration file on each test environment to get the correct browser URL (and any other relevant configuration data). So in other words you will need at least a little bit of code to handle the different URL's or any configuration data for each test environment.
For actually running the tests on remote environments, you should download the Microsoft Test Controller and Test Agents (Download link). And here's the documentation for installing and configuring the agents.
The idea is that your main machine (perhaps the main build/test machine) has the test controller installed, and the test controller remotely connects to the test agents which are installed on your test environment and launches the automated Coded UI tests.
Microsoft Test Manager also has command-line options so that you can schedule automated tests (e.g. you could run a script from the Windows task scheduler).
I can't remember the exact details of implementing these but hopefully I at least will put you in the right direction so that you can research these things further.
There are plenty of nuances with automating tests using test agents, so I would prepare to invest a fair amount of time in this.
UPDATE:
It's been a long time since I've worked with test automation so I don't remember details of my implementation, but as far as I remember, in my system, I had an XML configuration file stored on the test environment (e.g. C:\MyTestConfig\config.xml that had XML values for various configuration options, the important one being the URL that I want to launch, e.g.
<browserUrl>http://localhost:1659/whatever</browserUrl>
Then, I had a class in the test project which on instantiation would get the configuration XML file (it would be stored on the same place in each test environment), and read the values. It's been a long time since I've done it though, so I can't remember my exact implementation, but there is plenty of documentation on the web for reading XML in C# .NET.
From my test classes, I then inherited the class which reads the configuration values, and then from the test setup methods in the test classes this would launch the browser with the browser URL from the XML file and start the tests. If you don't know how to create test setup methods I would look at the documentation for the test framework you are using (which will most likely be the Visual Studio Unit testing framework as this is used by default with the Coded UI tests).