Hello there! 👋

Welcome to the 132nd edition of Software Testing Notes, a weekly newsletter featuring must-read content on Software Testing. I hope this week has been good for you so far.

This Week…

• How to decide on what to automate and what not to automate?
• Get started with Playwright in an hour.
• 7 Interesting Postman features for testing
• XPath-finding in Test Automation
• and more…

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⚙️ Automation

To automate or not to automate? by Jenna Charlton

Jenna Charlton rightly asserts that the decision to automate depends on various factors unique to each organization and software context. Jenna Charlton advises automating tests that are run frequently, are critical, or are hard to execute manually.

Playwright In An Hour by Gil Zilberfeld

If you’re want to learn Playwright, this is an excellent 1 hour webinar by Gil Zilberfeld. The webinar goes over went over how Playwright works, flavors of Playwright, key features, it’s supporting tools and some drawback that you should be aware of.

Furthermore, Team Playwright just dropped an tutorial on How to Run Playwright Tests with the VS Code Extension

7 Interesting Postman features for testing by Abigail Armijo

Uncover hidden gems of postman. Abigail Armijo elaborates on various types of requests Postman supports, as well as providing detailed instructions for testing and visualizing API data, creating flows, monitoring and scheduling collections, and performing performance testing.

Are You Sure They Are Flaky Tests? by Stuart Thomas

Stuart Thomas outlines a high-level guide for handling tests with fluctuating results, recommending steps such as disabling the unreliable test, reviewing and documenting the issue, prioritizing the fix based on risk, and investigating the root cause.

Furthermore, Victor Ayomipo shares How To Fix Flaky Tests in Rendering and Animation Workflows using Jest and React testing libraries.

XPath-finding in Test Automation by Team Merlin

XPath or CSS Selector? Which you should choose? This blog post compares CSS Selector and XPath and goes into the essentials of using XPath to locate specific elements in the HTML DOM structure, highlighting its basic format, usage, and handling of dynamic and multiple elements.

How to Handle StaleElementReferenceException in Selenium by Dominik Szahidewicz

StaleElementReferenceException — This exception indicates that the web element being referenced is no longer attached to the DOM of the page.

StaleElementReferenceException is a one of the most common issue everyone faces. outlines few Strategies to handle such exception with a practical code example.

Creating Effective Integration Tests: Best Practices and Tools Within the Spring Framework by Anton Belyaev

This is an excellent demonstration on how to handle integration tests with request mocking and using pact for contract testing. Anton Belyaev uses DSL wrappers to mock the service, JsonAssert for result verification and Pact for contract testing.

Reducing iOS Test execution time with Selective Testing by Tuan Hoang

Time to execution is the biggest factor once your test suite gets bigger. Tuan Hoang’s previous company, used to take 7 minutes to run over 3000 unit tests. To address this, Tuan Hoang developed a solution called selective testing, which involves running only the tests of modules affected by changes.

Exploring the Compose Preview Screenshot Testing tool by Joe Birch

Google just launched a Compose Preview Screenshot Testing tool at Google I/O 2024. Joe Birch shares how to write and perform screenshot testing using the Compose Screenshot Testing tool.

🔍 Test Automation

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🛠️ Resources & Tools

Testcontainers — An open-source framework for providing throwaway, lightweight instances of databases, message brokers, web browsers, or just about anything that can run in a Docker container.

line-length — A bookmarklet that allows you to mouse-over any element on a page and view information on median and max line-length, useful for projecting readability in layouts.

Firecamp — A developer-first open-source tool that's an alternative to tools like Postman or Insomnia, to help you design, develop, test, and document APIs.

actions-batch — A time-sharing supercomputer built on GitHub Actions, built in Go, allowing you to run a shell script in an isolated, immutable environment, and collect the logs or results.

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📝 List of Software Testers

It's hard to find good articles, podcasts on Software Testing. Even hard to find people who create them. Are you also looking for amazing software testers to follow or read their content ? check out this page dedicated to software testers.

Do you also create content around Software Testing ? Submit yours here and I will add it to the list.

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🎁 Bonus Content

📌 OTHER INTERESTING STUFF

• How to Manipulate Strings in JavaScript – With Code Examples
• Coding Exercise: Mock HTTP Status Code
• 50 Python Scripts for Automating Everyday Tasks

⭐ LAST WEEK'S MOST READ

1. How to use ChatGPT in software testing and automation by Pavan Kumar Bhimavarapu
2. A Short Digression on Test Data by Josh Grant
3. Frontend Performance Testing with Playwright and Lighthouse by Irfan Mujagić

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😂 And Finally,

Need "Error Preventers" - Real QA Job description 🤣

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📨 Send Me Your Articles, Tutorials, Tools!

Wrote something? Send links via Direct Message on Twitter @thetestingkit (details here). If you have any suggestions for improvement or corrections, feel free to reply to this email.

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Thanks to everyone for subscribing and reading!

Happy Testing!
Pritesh(@priteshusdadiya)