Playwright Workshop, Who’s Responsible for Security, BDD and More TGNS112

[00:00:00] Joe Colantonio How do you debug Playwright and Visual Studio Code? Is BDD at risk? And what was just released that may impact tester's views on security testing? Find out in this episode of the Test Guild News Show for the week of March 3rd. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this.

[00:00:18] Joe Colantonio First up is how to debug the Playwright test. It's Millan's point of view to our first article by Ashwin, who presents a straightforward 6-step guide for debugging Playwright tests written in TypeScript within Visual Studio Code. And this guide is aimed at testers and developers with a basic understanding of TypeScript or JavaScript, emphasizing the importance of debugging and test automation development for identifying and resolving code issues. And the article goes over a process that begins with creating a simple test script by making an API request to google.com and showing a response status of 200. And Ashwin then details how to utilize VSCode's JavaScript debug terminal to run the script set breakpoints for pausing execution and analyzing variables for efficient troubleshooting. And this approach emphasizes the tester's ability to debug the code within VSCode effectively ensuring smoother test execution.

[00:01:13] Joe Colantonio So as I was looking for new tools and new technology, I came across this article on LinkedIn by Matt Wynne. So Matt announced that in collaboration with the team at Conformiq, he announced the development of Performance Visualizer, a cutting-edge tool designed to merge model-based testing with behavior-driven development. So the visualizer really aims to really help with BDD development by providing a collaborative and visual platform for business requirements in testing, and it boasts features such as intuitive visual design, real-time synchronization of text, graphics, data, and integration with essential testing applications like JIRA, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps and Cucumber JS. Performance Visualizer enables teams to create, collaborate, and automate test scenarios with efficiency and accuracy. You might think it's really close the ability to convert Gherkin into models and vice versa, as well as to manage data through easy import creation and drag and drop functionality. This platform was designed to help accelerate release through automation, and it's currently available on the Atlassian Marketplace for Jira Cloud users. So thank you, Matt, for pointing out this new tool. And if you're doing anything with Jira, if you do anything with BDD, all you want to just dive into Model-based testing. Here's a good place to start.

[00:02:29] Joe Colantonio And speaking of BDD, you probably caught my last episode when I talked about rock and roll. Well, I found another article talking about does this raises concerns about the sustainability of open-source behavior-driven development frameworks. And this article was posted by Dmitriy, who is the CEO of Report Portal. Just big shout out to Reportportal.io. If you haven't tried it yet, you definitely should. It's an open-source project as well, but Dmitriy is covering in this article BDD frameworks, and one of the reasons why he wrote the article is some concerns that came up from some open-source behavior-driven development frameworks like SpecFlowBDD and CucumberBDD. And curiously, the involvement of commercial entities in the open source projects has actually hindered the progress, or sometimes just completely obliterated BDD technology in major companies seeking to expand their user bases have required rights to the projects, leading to a decline in support once these acquisitions cease to be financially beneficial. And Dmitriy highlights some analogies to this based on a science fiction novel suggesting that, like extraterrestrial events in the story, the commercial picnic in the open source ecosystem leaves behind zones devoid of resources and attention, and he emphasizes for open source projects to remain sustainable, they need diverse funding sources, community involvement, and effective governance. Without these, the projects risk being open-source solutions and depend on the whims of commercial benefactors, and the article concludes with a speculative outlook on the future of BDD, suggesting that the rise of generative AI that we've covered a lot on this new show could potentially eliminate the need for BDD frameworks by directly translating requirements into code. Definitely a possibility, and something you should definitely check out by reading the article in detail in the comment down below.

[00:04:19] Joe Colantonio Are you still not using the Screenplay pattern? Well, this might be an opportunity to start now. And this was announced by Jan announcing a big update to the SerenityJS Screenplay pattern tutorial, offering valuable insights for teams eager to enhance their automated acceptance testing capabilities. And if you don't know, the screenplay pattern is renowned for its user-centric approach to high-quality test automation and encourages the integration of business vocabulary into test scenarios, fostering in theory, better collaboration between technical and business stakeholders, and the recent enhancement focuses on demystifying the components of the Screenplay pattern, showcasing practical examples of multifactor and multi-interface test automation in guiding users on creating their own automation frameworks. Also, a great solution is Serenity, so SerenityJS implementation makes it accessible for existing projects to adopt this innovative pattern, furthering support by integrating libraries that cater to a wide variety of testing needs, including end-to-end component, mobile, and API testing. And additionally, SerenityJS enhances code reuse in reporting tools, streamlining the maintenance and sharing of test code across projects and teams. And this update really promises to help teams approach test automation by embedding domain-specific language into their tests that hopefully ensures scenarios not only easier to understand but also, align with business outcomes, which is the holy grail, I think of any testing effort. So thank you, Jan for this update.

[00:05:55] Joe Colantonio And are you looking for a great way to learn Playwright? Well, I found an awesome resource by Bas, who was trying to address the growing demand for Playwright and test automation through specialized workshops. So as Playwright translates from the new kid on the block to the preferred tool for many organizations, Bas's Workshop aims to clarify its unique features and capabilities in how to effectively integrate it into your automation strategies. And this hands-on workshop session covers key aspects such as creating Playwright projects, writing and running tests, interacting with web elements, implementing page objects for maintainability, managing the browser status, API, testing, debugging, tracing, test execution, and integrating tests into continuous integration pipeline. So it's really has a lot of stuff packed in here. It's designed for software testers and developers, and the workshop is suitable for both beginners and those with experience in web and API automation. And it also offers flexibility in delivery, accommodating in on-site or online training sessions that can be adjusted from a full-day tutorial to a half-day session upon request. And despite not offering public courses at the moment, Bas is open to collaboration with companies interested in incorporating Playwright into their curriculum. And to work, what I think is one of the premier automation instructors in the industry, Bas's workshop really represents a valuable opportunity to gain real-world practical knowledge and skills, and definitely check out Bas and all his awesomeness in that link down below.

[00:07:26] Joe Colantonio In this Follow the Money segment, Octopus Deploy, which is a continuous delivery solution has officially acquired CodeFresh Inc, and this acquisition is pivotal as Octopus Deploy really amplifies its support for Kubernetes and reiterates its commitment to offering top-tier continuous delivery platforms build virtual machines, and cloud-native applications at an enterprise scale. And this integration into code fresh into Octopus Deploy not only expands its technological capabilities of Octopus but also enriches its service offerings to software teams, enabling advanced CD release orchestration and observability across diverse workflows.

[00:08:09] Joe Colantonio Who is responsible for cybersecurity? Well, according to the White House, the burden of cybersecurity should squarely fall on the shoulders of tech companies and the federal government rather than individual users. And according to this recent report titled back to the Building Blocks, a significant shift is needed in programming languages used for development-critical systems. This report criticizes the reliance on memory unsafe languages like C and C++ advocating for a transition to memory-safe alternatives such as C#, Python, and Ros to bolster cybersecurity. And this document underscores the importance of not just software, but also right hardware choices, highlighting features and processors from leading manufacturers that enhance memory security. However, the report overlooks the potential risk posed by generative AI and code creation, missing an opportunity really to address the challenges it brings to cyber security, especially as we've seen in a bunch of different news show how this is becoming a bigger and bigger trend. The White House suggests that software manufacturers and the customers must prioritize cyber security quality as a business imperative, with top-level executives held accountable. And this report really highlights what I think is the need for testers and software testers to become more involved in security. So if you do not do anything with security, here's a great report to point to, to your management to say, hey, this is something we should definitely look at because it's coming down the road and they'll probably start having laws and other things that place that can make it even more imperative that you get involved now.

[00:09:41] Joe Colantonio For links of everything value we covered in this news episode, head on over to the links in the comment down below. And so that's it for this episode of The Test Guild News Show. I'm Joe, my mission to help you succeed in creating end-to-end full-stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.