Skip to main content

Action and Validation

One of the key principles of automation in Eggplant is ensuring that every action that is performed on the SUT, is validated with an expectation. A validation can simply be a resulting text or image being found. In effect, this is the same as a real user waiting for an event to complete before interacting with it.

The key benefits of this are
  • Ensures the automation does not get ahead of itself or out of sync.
  • Allows for variations in performance of the SUT (Network speed, system resources etc.)
  • Provides a simple assertion ensuring the correctness of a test.
DON'T:

The video below, demonstrates what happens when validations aren't applied to the code:

  • The user attempts to start with clicks followed by type texts etc.
  • As each line of code is executed instantly - no consideration is made towards the behaviour of the system under test - and quickly fails (launching browser and entering url)
  • To remedy this, the user tries to add waits to pre-empt loads times etc. This is bad as waits are always the worst case scenario, therefore causing slow execution.
  • Hard Waits are a useful tool - but can negatively impact the speed of the script and are not flexible to differing load speeds and behaviours of the SUT - leading too a maintenance cost.
DO:

The video below, shows a significant improvement in robustness and speed of the automation, by implementing the techniques demonstrated in the Good Code example:

  • The user has added "Dynamic Waits" (e.g. 'WaitFor 10,...').
  • The approach will yield far more robust results.
  • The solution will handle best and worst case SUT performance.
  • The long term maintenance will be significantly less.

For a detailed breakdown of Image and OCR Searches, including Dynamic Wait commands, please refer to this link.


A Summary of What You Have Learned

Using Validations after each action not only ensures the correctness in the test, but it also is a key technique to ensure that the automation is in sync with what is being displayed during the test.

Bad Practice Example
Good Practice Example

// Step 1
click image:"chrome"
wait 5
typetext "https://demo.nopcommerce.com/",returnkey
wait 10

// Step 2
moveto image:"Computers"
wait 1
click image:"Desktops"
wait 10

// Step 3
click image:"DigitalStormVANQUISH"
wait 10

// Step 4
click image:"ADDTOCART"
wait 4

// Step 5
moveto image:"Basket"
wait 1
click image:"GOTOCART"
assert that imagefound(0,"DigitalStormVANQUISH3CustomPerformance")


// Step 1
click image:"chrome"
waitfor 20, image:"refresh"

typetext "https://demo.nopcommerce.com/",returnkey
waitfor 20, image:"nopCommerce"

// Step 2
moveto image:"Computers"
click image:"Desktops"
waitfor 20, "HomeComputersDesktops"

// Step 3
click image:"DigitalStormVANQUISH"
waitfor 20, image:"DigitalStormVANQUISH3CustomPerformancePC"

// Step 4
click image:"ADDTOCART"
waitfor 20,image:"Succesfully Added to Cart"

// Step 5
moveto image:"Basket"
click image:"GOTOCART"
waitfor 20, image:"Shoppingcart"
assert that imagefound(0,"DigitalStormVANQUISH3CustomPerformance")

Images Folder:
Images Folder: