Practical Tips for Testing Web Apps

Arvind Padmanabhan

Trustee @ Devopedia Foundation

Overview

#4 Bypass GUI

 

#5 Dependency Injection & Mocking

 

#6 CRUD vs Data-first Approach

#7 CAPTCHA

 

#8 Manage Tokens, API Keys, etc.

 

#9 Look Under the Hood

#1 Purpose of Testing

 

#2 Test   Configuration

 

#3 Modular Test Cases

Devopedia Codebase

Architecture

  • Python/Selenium for test automation
  • Pytest as the test framework
  • OWASP ZAP for security testing
  • GitHub Actions for CI/CD

Testing @ Devopedia

~450 GUI tests

~150 CLI tests

#1 Purpose of Testing

Find Bugs

Validate the product

Tester's perspective

Developer's perspective

Quality is a product of a conflict between programmers and testers.

-- Yegor Bugayenko

#2 Test Configuration

        "default": {
            "php": "php8.1",
            "mysql": "mysql"
        }
    },
    "logs": {
        "main": "../../tmp/mainAppLog.txt",
        "phperr": "../../php_errors.log"
    },
    "online": true,
    "db": {
        "driver": "mysql+pymysql",
        "host": "127.0.0.1",
        "user": "root",
        "pwd": "",
        "name": "test"
    },
    "data": {
        "default":  {
            "src": "data/default.sql",
            "maxids": {
                "acronyms": 211,
                "article_request": 80,
                "chat_msgs": 11710,


  • Executable paths
  • Log paths
  • Database access
  • Test data source
  • Database offsets
  • Browser options
  • ...

Local testing

CI/CD

Staging

#2 Modular Test Cases

  • "Login" is a test case
    • It can executed standalone
    • Or it can be part of a longer test sequence
  • Validation
    • Perform full validation (test asserts) when executed standalone
    • Should be able to skip when used in non-standalone mode
  • Login can be seen as a pre-requisite test for "Load Article Form"
  • An alternative is to implement these as a library of functions

Load Article Form

Login

Save Article

1

The smallest unit of execution is a test case.

3

What test cases and procedures to execute are determined by a test plan.

5

Separate CLI and GUI tests. Separate DB interfacing from main test execution.

2

Test cases executed in a specific sequence is a test procedure.

4

For better reuse, each test case shouldn't do too many things.

#4 Bypass GUI

Exercise server-side validation

Use tools: Postman, curl, etc.

Don't forget client-side validation

#5 Dependency Injection

send_email

write_to_file

write_to_socket

#5 Mocking

App

External Weather Service

Weather API

Weather Mock

#6 CRUD

Create

Read

Update

Delete

#6 Data-first Approach

Read

Delete

Create

Update

Test Data Generator *

* Helps test pagination, filtering, searching, performance, ...

Enabled by

TDD

#7 CAPTCHA

Use an in-house generated CAPTCHA

See recaptcha

Select a CAPTCHA that has a test hook

#8 Manage Secrets

(Tokens, API Keys, Passwords, etc.)

Read from untracked files or environment variables

Don't commit these into the code repo (use .gitignore)

{
    "facebook": {
        "name": "xxx",
        "login": "xxx",
        "password": "xxx",
        "email": ""
    },
    "zap": {
        "apikey": "xxx"
    },
    "OAuth": {
        "bitbucket": {
            "key": "xxx",
            "secret": "xxx"
        }
        ...

Use a Git Hook to catch unintentional commits

#9 Look Under the Hood

Perform HTML validation

Analyze server logs & browser console logs

Detect SEO problems

Study or review dev code

#9 Example Code

As a tester, what test cases can you think of?

Does the code suggest any design problems?

Bonus "Tip"

Software testers always go to heaven; they've already had their fair share of hell.

 

-- Anonymous

Devopedia

Visit https://devopedia.org & join the movement!

 

Support us as a reader, writer, editor or donor.

Write to webadmin@devopedia.org

Practical Tips for Testing Web Apps

By Arvind Padmanabhan

Made with Slides.com

Practical Tips for Testing Web Apps

There's no silver bullet for testing web applications. In addition to common best practices, each testing professional tends to develop his or her own techniques either by years of experience or habit. In this talk the speaker will share his experience with developing and testing web apps. Devopedia's own web app will be used as a case study. The talk will address both frontend and backend, both unit testing and system testing. Participants will need to be familiar with the architecture of web apps (such as MVC or equivalent pattern).

  • 450

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