Programming Projects

To enhance my development skill set, I have been working on a few side projects. More can be found on my GitHub site. To see general blog entries on building automated test frameworks, go to the Table of Contents.

The Cheezy Internet: Creating a Ruby + Watir + Cucumber automation framework with Jeff Morgan's Page-Object gem:

November 2021

• Part One: Source Book: Cucumbers and Cheese: A Tester's Workshop
• Part Two: Installing Ruby + Watir + Chromedriver + VS Code on Windows 10
• Part Three: Writing Ruby + Watir tests for The-Internet
• Part Four: Composing tests using Cucumber and Gherkin

Are you sure the buses are still listed?
Data-driven API tests with Ruby + NET::HTTP + ThoughtWorks Gauge

September 2019

• Part One: Setting up the test plan and table data in a spec file
• Part Two: Interacting with the MBTA API using NET::HTTP
• Source Code: https://github.com/tjmaher/gauge-ruby-api

Introduction to Capybara: A TestAutomationU course
May 2019

• Part One: Setup and Installation of Ruby + Bundler, Capybara, and RSpec
• Part Two: Arrange, Act, Assert! Testing Links and Navigation, Setting Expectations, and Searching Within
• Part Three: Finders and Matchers
• Part Four: Testing a Login Page, refactoring it into a method
• Part Five: Dropdowns, Radio Buttons, and Checkboxes
• Part Six: Handling Alerts and Modals
• Part Seven: Advanced Topics such as Screenshots, Headless Chrome, Capybara's headless Apparition driver, and adding Applitools. 
• Source Code: https://github.com/tjmaher/tau-capybara

Basic Capybara-Gauge 
December 2018

• Part One: Analyzing The-Internet
• Part Two: Setup Ruby Environment
• Part Three: Setup Capybara to Test Opening Chrome
• Part Four: Add Option For Chrome Headless
• Part Five: Add Test Steps and Spec Implementations
• Part Six: Setup Chrome and ChromeDriver Logging
• Part Seven: Rubocop Code Review
• Source Code: https://github.com/tjmaher/capybara-gauge

Discovering Docker
Spring & Summer 2018

• Starting a Selenium Grid using AWS + SeleniumHQ Docker images + Docker Compose
• Setting up Ubuntu Linux with Docker
• Basic Chef + Test Kitchen: Setting up Ubuntu with Vagrant + Virtual Box + the Test-Kitchen Ruby Gem on a MacBook

Tinkering with Twitter
October 2017

• Part One: Twitter and the Twitter Search API
• Part Two: Getting the Twitter credentials: Consumer Keys and Access Tokens
• Part Three: Setting up an API Testing Environment with Twitter4J
• Part Four: Post a Tweet Using Twitter4J To Interact With the Twitter API
• GitHub: Review the source code for the project.

Build a Basic Appium Framework
May 2017 - June 2017

• Part One: Review How to Inspect Mobile Apps with Appium Desktop
• Part Two: Design a Basic Test, Examining Mobile Elements with Appium Desktop
• Part Three: Install and Launch an App Using Desired Capabilities
• Part Four: Set up the Page Objects, Page Factories and Tests
• Part Five: Download the tests and run them on your own MacBook!
• Part Six:  How to create and launch an Android emulator from Android Studio
• Part Seven: What happens behind the scenes as Appium installs and launches an Android app? Examining and footnoting a log file.
• GitHub: Review the source code for the project. 

Learning Appium Desktop
April 2017

• Part One: What is Appium Server and How Do You Start It With Appium Desktop
• Part Two:  How to Connect To Your Android Device Using the Android SDK, the Android Command Line Tools, and the Android Debug Bridge
• Part Three:  Setting up remote devices through WiFi
• Part Four:  Setting up Android Emulators with Android Virtual Device Manager (avd), choosing the Android operating system version
• Part Five:  Find the Desired Capabilities: appPackage and appActivity. Bug in AAPT if giving just appName
• Part Six:  Inspecting an Android app using Appium Desktop

Learning Serenity BDD
March 2017

• Serenity BDD: An Automation Framework That Uses Specification by Example (SBE)
• What is the Difference Between TDD and BDD?
• Studying BDD using The Cucumber Book and BDD in Action
• Scaffolding a new project using Maven Archetypes
• Reviewing The Serenity Screenplay Tutorial

Are You Sure the Bus Line is Listed? Gathering data using REST APIs and REST Assured:
February 2017

• Don't Gather Data from the MBTA's website. Use a RESTful Endpoint Instead!
• Interacting with MBTA's API using REST Assured

Building a Geb + Groovy + Spock project with Yeoman:
November 2016

• About Yeoman, scaffolding, and other tooling applications
• A Step-by-Step Process: Installing and Configuring Yeoman using Chris Hluchan's Geb Generator
• Running the Built-In Tests From the Command Line, and Examining How They Are Set Up
• Initial Source Code Generated by the Geb Generator

SDET Prepwork:

I have shifted from being an automation engineer to being a Software Developer in Test. In order to keep up, I have written a few blogs entries about what I need to learn:

• What is an SDET? Intro to the Efficiency of Sorting Algorithms: Insertion sort vs Merge sort (7/24/2016)
• What is Big O notation and Logs? Comparing Growth Rate in Algorithms (7/25/2016)

Playing with Protractor:
September 2016

• Testing an AngularJS application with Protractor, Jasmine, and JavaScript
• Walkthrough of installing PhoneCat Tutorial App: How to learn AngularJS
• The complexities of testing JavaScript frameworks, according to Vojtěch Jína, creator of the Karma Test Runner

RESTful API Testing with Postman and Newman:
July 2016

Article covers "What is an API?" and gives sample APIs on the web. Also shows

• Walkthrough Setting up a Postman Test
• How to download and configure Newman, how Postman runs tests from the command line

Configuring Build.Gradle Environments:
June 2016

• IntelliJ: Setting up WebDriver framework in Gradle
• Eclipse: Setting up WebDriver framework in Gradle
• A Bit About Groovy

The Builder Pattern:
April 2016 - May 2016

• Anti-Pattern: Telescoping Constructors
• Investigating Address Builder
• GitHub, T.J. Maher

RESTful Testing with Stripe and Apache HttpComponents:
Feb 2016 - March 2016

• Introduction
• Part One: Intro to REST APIs
• Part Two: Interacting with Stripe using http and cURL
• Part Three: API Keys, Property files, and Initial Setup
• Part Four: UriBuilder, HttpGet and other Apache HttpComponents
• Part Five: From JSON to Object: HttpEntity and GSON
• Source Code: GitHub, T.J. Maher

Automate Amazon 
Dec 2015 - Jan 2016

How to develop a rudimentary framework to create automated tests for Amazon.

• Introduction
• Setup a Development Environment 
• Sketch Out a Use Case 
• Common Utility Methods
• Writing a Sign In Test
• Product Enums, Product Objects, and Pojos
• Initialize Cart and Login
• Writing the Shopping Cart Test

Testing The-Internet
June - July 2015

Writing automated tests versus Dave Haeffner's Login page on his test site, The-Internet.

• Step One: Sketch out the simple manipulation of a Login page
• Step Two: Draft Common Utilities
• Step Three: Storing Constants: static finals vs enums
• Step Four: Storing Locators for Web Elements
• Step Five: The Page Object Model
• Step Six: Writing the Automated Test