Playing with Protractor: The complexities of testing JavaScript frameworks, according to Vojtěch Jína

Vojtěch Jína, a Software Engineer at Google, finished his Master's thesis, JavaScript Test Runner, at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 2013. Vojtěch talked about, in his thesis, the difficulty developers had when attempting to write unit tests for their code when using JavaScript.

"The language for web applications is JavaScript, which is a very dynamic language without static typing. There is no compiler that could catch mistakes like misspelling a variable name or calling a non existing method on an object - developers have to actually run the code to catch these issues. Therefore testing is absolutely necessary".

JavaScript Test Runner, by Vojtěch Jína

https://github.com/karma-runner/karma/blob/master/thesis.pdf

#IfMontyPythonWereCoders

What is the average airspeed #velocity of an unladen swallow #coding in #Java? #IfMontyPythonWereCoders #AgileSoftwareDevelopment

— T.J. Maher (@tjmaher1) September 13, 2016

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer

// Software QA Engineer since 1996.
// Working with Selenium WebDriver since 2014.
// Follow Adventures in Automation and Like us on Facebook!

Playing with Protractor: Learning AngularJS by setting up the PhoneCat Tutorial App

Normally, when investigating new automation tools and technologies, my modus operandi is to take a good two or three hours to figure out who created the tool, how the tool evolved, if it was based on earlier work, etc. After all that is done, I spend another hour or so formatting my research notes into a pretty blog entry.

This time around, I wanted to do something different...

Instead of starting with researching which Google employees made AngularJS and Protractor, what projects they both were based on, and how they are used, I wanted to continue what I did the previous blog entry about Protractor, AngularJS, JavaScript and Jasmine, and dive right into the code itself.

This blog is geared towards the manual tester who is attempting to learn automation, exactly where I was back in December 2014. You can read more about that transition in my TechBeacon article, Switching Careers in QA: From Manual Testing to Automation Development.

For this blog entry, I'll walk you through installing the PhoneCat Tutorial App at https://docs.angularjs.org/tutorial. If you aren't familiar working every day with Git or the Command Line interface, and haven't tinkered with using Node.js or the Node Package Manager (npm), every extra bit of instruction helps.

Once you have everything set up, you can go at your own pace through Google's tutorial.

Playing with Protractor: Testing an AngularJS application with Protractor, Jasmine, and JavaScript

Yesterday was a lot of fun! I was given an automation development assignment a few days ago in preparation for an upcoming job interview:

Using any technology I’d like, as long as it could be run using freely available software, after filling out a questionnaire given on the company's healthcare web app and writing a test journal post, I was to produce automated checks for the following:

• An “Assessment Complete” badge appears on the dashboard
• The journal entry created is present on the journal page.
• The personality type displayed on the dashboard matches the one given to me in the assessment

What the instructions didn't say was that before each test, you had to navigate a login procedure:

Selenium can be slow: When could we use API testing?

A Selenium WebDriver test can be slow. Imagine running a test for a login screen:

... waiting, waiting, waiting... Surprise, it's a browser! ... waiting, waiting, waiting... It's a login screen! ... waiting for SendKeys to enter the username and password into the proper textboxes... and for the Login button to be clicked.

Here's to Twenty Years in Testing!

With all that's been going on lately, I missed a very important anniversary...

As of last month, I have spent twenty years in the software testing industry.

How I Started: From a Computer Science Major to a QA Engineer

Unsure how I wanted to apply my Computer Science degree, I left college for a bit during my Junior year at Bridgewater State. Businesses were just starting to invade the web, causing the early pioneers of this new electronic frontier to grumble.

Demand was so high to find people to staff these new "dot.coms", placement agencies were called in to weed through job applications and find good candidates. I found myself at one of these agencies, Sally Silver Contract Services. After testing my analytical skills and reviewing my technical background, some code samples of work I was doing in the classroom, and a rough portfolio from when I spent two years in a college job as a graphic artist / desktop publisher, they asked me, "Have you ever heard of 'Quality Assurance'? Oracle has a new division in Massachusetts, a three month contract position with an option for extension..."

Follow Adventures in Automation!

August has been a busy month.

• Currently, I am searching for new automation development opportunities. 
• I've spent much of my free time preparing for whiteboard coding interviews, and juggling many, many on-site interviews. 
• I've been working on a new TechBeacon.com article, "How To Pass A Coding Interview As An Automation Developer". It should be published by the end of September. 

Want to keep up with Adventures in Automation?

• Follow this blog by the new Blogger.com widget on the right hand sidebar. 
• Like this blog on Facebook!

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer

// Software Quality Assurance Engineer since 1996.
// Check out Adventures in Automation and Like us on Facebook!

Looking for an automation developer in the Boston, MA area?

Anybody looking for an automation developer in the Boston, MA area? With less of a reliance on Selenium WebDriver / Java for automation, I soon will be out of job!

I have some experience setting up Automated Test Frameworks:

• Setting up a development environment with IntelliJ / Maven, then with IntelliJ / Gradle, then Eclipse / Gradle. 
• Taking a deeper dive into Gradle, exploring Groovy, using it to run simple tests.
• Using both TestNG and JUnit4 ways of making assertions and Hamcrest.
• Abstracting the page using the Page Object model.
• Using CSS Selectors to find and manipulate web elements on the page.
• How to organize the web element selectors: first in enums, then in By statements.
• Wrapping Selenium calls, placing them in a CommonUtils library.
• Doing away with wrapping Selenium calls and just using Page Factory.
• Performing API testing with Apache's HTTP Components.
• Passing data to tests using pojos and builder patterns,
• Showing examples of good logging for tests.
• Experiments with setting up a virtual dev environment with VirtualBox, Vagrant, and Docker.
• Installing, setup, and learning Docker with the Docker Toolbox and Docker's setup docs.
• Setting up Selenium Grid (for beginners).
• Setting up Selenium Grid in a Docker Container.

I published an article on TechBeacon, how I switched from manual to automated testing.

My LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjmaher1
My GitHub account: https://github.com/tjmaher


Thank you very much, and Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer,
Fitbit-Boston

// BSCS, MSE, and QA Engineer since Aug. 1996
// Automation developer for [ 1.5 ] years and still counting!
// Check out Adventures in Automation and Like us on Facebook!

Fitbit-Boston is looking for Senior Software Engineer for new Software Test Engineering dept

Fitbit-Boston is looking for Senior Software Engineer for their new Software Test Engineering department.

Taken from Fitbit's job posting:

"Effective Automated testing is essential to agile software development. All software developers write tests, but some kinds of testing present unique challenges. Fitbit is looking for people with the skills of a good Software Engineering  and the mindset of a tester to solve testing challenges for our teams and raise the bar for test automation at Fitbit".

"As a Senior Software Engineer on the Software Test Engineering Team at Fitbit you will work as part of a product Scrum team on a sprint-by sprint basis to identify appropriate testing strategies, help integrate testing frameworks, and solve testing challenges. Your goal will be to enable the other members of the team to improve automated test coverage."

Note: Fitbit is not looking for automation developers. Fitbit-Boston is looking for Senior Software Engineers who have five years experience in languages such as Java, Scala, and Groovy. See https://www.fitbit.com/jobs/search#jobs/oJ801fwC for more information.

... In other news, does any company in Boston need an automation developer familiar with writing automated test frameworks in Selenium WebDriver / Java? See the Table of Contents of this site to see my skill set.

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer,
Fitbit-Boston

// BSCS, MSE, and QA Engineer since Aug. 1996
// Automation developer for [ 1.5 ] years and still counting!
// Check out Adventures in Automation and Like us on Facebook!

SDET Prep: Data Structures: Arrays, Hashmaps and how to implement them in Java.

This blog post is part of a series as I research how to move from Automation Development to being a Software Developer in Test. We covered some basic algorithms, before. These next few posts will deal with data structures, illustrating them with Java. 

As an automation developer, I've been focusing on browser testing with Selenium WebDriver and Java, being able to draw from my decades of experience testing web applications. When it comes to various data structures, I use arrays, lists, arraylists, and the occasional hashmap in my day-to-day work, but that is about it.

A Software Developer in Test (SDET) isn't that far removed from a Software Development Engineer (SDE), relying on data structures and algorithms I once studied as a Computer Sci major back at Bridgewater State. Note: Each link below goes to the respective Harvard University CS50 video, if any.

• Data Structures: Arrays, Singly Linked Lists, Doubly Linked Lists, Binary Trees, Stacks, Queues, ArrayLists, and Hash Tables
• Algorithms: Breadth First Search and Depth First Search (not on CS50), Binary Search, Insertion Sort, Merge Sort, Quicksort. 
• Concepts such as Recursion, Bit Manipulation (not on CS50), Pointers, Dynamic Memory Allocation and Structures 
• Design Patterns like: Singleton Design Pattern, Factory Design Pattern
• Storing Memory in Stack vs. Heap

If you are a manual tester or automated tester and want to shift to software development, Gayle Laakmann McDowell's Cracking the Coding Interview is an excellent summation of all terms listed above. It seems to be a good resource for even Senior developers, who may be far removed from college.