Toad Testing, Karate Course for Newbie, Mock APIs and More TGNS104

[00:00:00] Joe Colantonio Have you seen the new toad concept in testing yet? Do you want to know a way to learn Karate and API testing at the same time? And what made your website Black Friday disaster crash led to a huge sales plunge? Find out on this episode of The Test Guild News Show for the week of December 3rd. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this.

[00:00:20] But before we get into it, are you looking to take your automation projects to the next level? Look no further than Applitools and their Visual AI Validation testing platform. Trust me, it is a game-changer. Plus, you could try it out yourself by creating a free account. Just click on the special link down below in the first comment and see the difference for yourself.

[00:00:39] Lately, you've probably heard a lot about the relationship between observability monitoring and testing, but I found an excellent resource that goes over this in more detail to help you and your teams. And this is Chris Kenst's latest blog post that delves into how these elements are increasingly entwined, especially in the context of DevOps. Chris argues that while observability and monitoring are not traditionally part of testing, they can significantly enhance testing capabilities when executed effectively. Monitoring involves capturing application data to build dashboards, reports, and alerts, providing insights into system behavior and performance. Observability, on the other hand, is about actively searching for information, especially for unknown unknowns, and testing the internal state of an application based on external outputs. This post goes over all this and reveals a concept called Toad, which is testing observability and DevOps and highlights a way to understand the common thread between these three aspects. This approach suggests that focusing on testing observable in DevOps together can lead to a deeper understanding of an application. For example, robust monitoring can reveal information about a system's functionality and reliability which are traditionally assessed during testing. Observability extends this by providing insights into the application under test. Chris's posts is part of a larger conversation about context-driven testing, contributing to a crowdsourced book by the Association for Software Testing, titled Navigating the World of a context-driven tester that offers a more integrated and comprehensive approach to understanding and approving applications that you definitely should check out. And you can find it in that first comment down below.

[00:02:20] Joe Colantonio A new blog post that caught my attention by Gleb, that goes over a new approach to managing end-to-end tests using GitHub actions. And in this, Gleb goes over a method involved in keeping tests in a separate repository from the web application, a strategy that offers both advantages and challenges. This key feature of the setup is the use of the slash command in GitHub actions when a developer opens a pull request in a web application repository, they can type a comment with the text slash Cypress to trigger their test run into the separate tests repository. The results of this test run are then posted back to the comment in the pull request creating what is a seamless integration between the two repositories. Very cool and you can definitely learn more by checking out this must-read blog post in the comments down below and let me know what you think.

[00:03:11] Joe Colantonio Also, my news hunting journey. I found another blog post that goes over a tool that I don't think a lot of people take advantage of. This is by Amit, who shares how his recent journey explained various API mocking tools for company-wide implementations has come across a cool tool called MSW, or Mock Service Worker. And the Mock Service Worker JavaScript capabilities really caught his attention. What sets mock service workers apart? According to Amit, its an innovative use of service workers. This technique allows intercepting network requests using the fetch API, creating a mock environment so authentic the JavaScript code won't even realize it's dealing with a mock response. And he also mentioned on his LinkedIn post that he took this tool for a spin with a REACT JS test. And the results were stellar and the integration was smoother and the tool performed flawlessly compared to some of the other tools used. If you've never heard of Mock Service Worker, I highly recommend you check it out like I did as well. And once again, it's an API mocking library for JavaScript developers and testers that offers a client-agnostic approach to mocking that can be used across various frameworks in environments. So if you're looking for a tool that has no configuration with a no adapter approach that allows for unprecedented reuse of mocks across different environments and tools, whether it's integration tests, automated browser tests, demo showcases, or even react Native apps, Mock service worker provides a constant, reliable, mocking solution. I highly recommend you check it out as well. Thank you, Amit, for this tool recommendation.

[00:04:43] Joe Colantonio Also, I just want to officially announce that we just released a new course at The Test Guild. If you don't know, Test Guild has a bunch of free courses, all you need to do is go to testguild.com, click on courses and you see all the free classes. But our latest is a hands-on guide to API testing with Karate and our instructor is James Willett, who's a well-known test automation engineer, and he's done a bunch of other courses as well. A well-known structure and his hands-on course introduces API testing using the Karate Framework, which we haven't tried yet, is a real powerful tool designed to implement all types of test automation, including API testing in a simple and expressive nontactical syntax. And this course goes over the essential techniques and functionalities of Karate from writing your first test script and executing parallel tests so goes over installation and setup of Karate, wirting API test in Karate, creating an API testing automation framework with Karate, implementation of data-driven test in Karate and execution of Karate tests and analysis of test results and reports. Whether you're a beginner in test automation and looking for a way to upgrade your API testing skills, I highly recommend you check out this course and you can register for free now in the comment down below.

[00:05:55] Joe Colantonio I don't know how popular this next article is going to be, but it caught my attention because it really highlights some cool uses of AI with SaaS-based testing. And this is how a company Panaya announced Rapid Flow kit, which is powered by advanced AI algorithms and it is used for system integrators and organizations plan to migrate to SAPS/ 4HANA. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools to accurately project estimates enhanced automatic code, corrections simplification tools, and smart testing solutions. If you're probably one of the people that are trying to do this and you're looking for some tools in especially AI-based tools to help you with no code tests automation to help reduce testing time and resources. According to this article, by 85%. Something you should check out and see it for yourself and see if it works.

[00:06:43] Joe Colantonio Also, I'm not sure how many of you all are using RPA testing, but if you are, here's a solution I think you're going to enjoy as well. And this post by Joe Fernandez How Microsoft's Power Automate Desktop introduced a cool RPA feature The desktop flow activity copilot. This was actually revealed at a recent Ignite conference. And this tool adds awesome monitoring. Desktop flows that offers a conversational interface that allows users to ask natural language questions about your automation activities. Some key functionalities include tracking flow runs, analyzing errors, checking machine statuses, and examining user engagement with flows. So it could do things like users can easily find out the most frequently run flows from last week compared to successful and failed flows from the past quarter. Identify machines under maintenance, and list the top active users of flows in the previous month. This feature is still in preview and it is powered by Azure's open AI service. So if you're interested in RPA, you just can start with RPA or if you've never tried Microsoft's Power Automate desktop, you definitely should check it out because it's adding a lot of cool new features that's going to help you with RPA testing.

[00:07:53] Joe Colantonio I'm always finding new tools and new resources from Unmesh, and this is no exception. Unmesh posted something about the self-operating computer framework that was recently introduced. I think it offers a lot of cool features that you should know about, so let's check it out. This framework was designed to enable models like GPT 4 Vision to interact with the computer through most clicks and keyboard interactions. And this tool is different from traditional test automation and RPA tools because it allows a model to view the screen and perform mouse and keyboard actions to achieve specific goals similar to human operators. And the makers of this framework are developing this framework as part of a larger project which includes Agent one Vision, a model aimed at more accurate click locator predictions. And this is a step towards creating a full-service operating computer, which I think is really cool. I just think this is where the industry is going with vision-based automation. And this is something you should learn more about and you can find out about it in the comment down below.

[00:08:55] Joe Colantonio And James Pulley always reminds us why you need to pay attention to performance. If you're not following James Pulley, you definitely should. Every Black Friday, he has a live show on his podcast that goes over Black Friday crashes. And he posted this about a major Australian retailer that faced a significant downturn due to its website crashing during Black Friday, one of the busiest days of the year for retail. The company reported an 11.9% drop in sales from July to November, coinciding with a major website crash during Black Friday.

[00:09:30] And for links of everything value we covered in this news episode, head in over to links in the first comment down below. And while you're there, make sure to check out our awesome sponsor Applitools Free account Offer and discover how to take your automation testing to the next level leveraging Visual A.I.. So that's it for this episode of the Test Guild News Show. I'm Joe, my mission is to help you succeed in creating end-to-end full-stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.