Nishant Verma

“When” and “Why” about Locators

2012-01-25T15:04:00.000+05:30

Generally when we are writing our automation test in Selenium or any other driver , the first thing we tend to do is start looking for object Id. Thought we have multiple ways of getting the hold of the object on a webpage like:

Id
name
Link text
XPath
DOM

Id or name is the most simplest and easy to use locators. Advantages with them is it increases the readability of your test code. It’s also better than other locators in terms of test performance. If you are using lot of Id’s and your test code is becoming too clumsy then one suggested way of using Id’s would be to have a separate file and then probably you can rename them if they are not properly named in the page source (Google page “q” as their search box Id).

Link Text is mostly used with links and limited to that. They are easy to use. However they are a little problematic to maintain because of often changing link texts.

Next is the famous XPath, simple to use (if you are using Firebug or any other add-in to get it) but makes your test code look ugly. XPath should generally be used when the object is having neither Id nor name. Problem with XPath is when we run the test, browser runs it XPath processor to check if it can find any object, which actually impacts the performance. One important thing which we tend to forget while using XPath is, it ensures the order of elements. So it should be used to verify some object with respect to certain other object. One example could be to verify if “Today’s Deal” appears with in the header section of the Amazon home page.

DOM I haven’t used much so can’t comment on that.

Testing Web application using AndroidDriver

2012-01-12T15:50:00.000+05:30

This blog is mostly like a “How to” post on testing web application using Eclipse IDE, JUnit and AndroidDriver. What all you need ? Eclipse (version 3.7), JUnit, selenium-server-standalone-2.15.0.jar and of course Android SDK.

Before you do anything, you need to install Android Emulator on Windows, and then install WebDriver on that emulator:

Post the set up, you can refer below to download the sample test framework from Github to get started

https://github.com/nishantverma/Android

This is a test framework skeleton and can be leveraged for specific testing requirements.

Feedback

2012-01-01T23:52:00.000+05:30

On Friday, I just finished "Group Feedback" session. Well I don't want to blog about what happened in that feedback. This post is more from the point of view of "Why we need feedback?".

What is "feedback"? Wikipedia defines feedback as

Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same (i.e. same defined) event / phenomenon (or the continuation / development of the original phenomenon) in the present or future. When an event is part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop, then the event is said to "feed back" into itself.

We work in team and the team is made up of "Individuals". The behavior of individuals influence the outcome of team , may be in a positive manner or negative! A team is constituted to achieve a certain goal and so the team members behavior is very crucial for team success. Over a period of time when you work together, you learn about positives and negatives of a person. This helps you in understanding the person a little more and gel with them in a better manner. Somewhere I feel, this adds to the productivity of the team.

In a group feedback session, when you listen to people who are giving feedback to others, you actually get to know what they expect in their team members. This helps understanding the team better. One way to improve ourselves at what we do is to seek periodical feedback and sincerely work on the improvement items. So this feedback shouldn't be one time activity like once in a year kind and could be scheduled every 3 months or 6 months so that team is better equipped in attaining the designated goals. During my 6+ years of experience, I have never seen this as a team driven activity. I have always seen this task coming up when we near the financial review period. In some organizations I have seen that people will actually wait till the end of the year to give you feedback that you were wrong (with respect to certain tasks). I really pity those people as they think feedback is to point out someone's mistake rather than a chance to help someone improve themselves and collaborate better. So it becomes more of a formality rather than a necessity.

Most of the time onus lies on individuals; I have seen people willing to learn and improve and also few people who doesn't believe in these things. Well this post will not change any perception about "feedback" for people who doesn't believe in that. But my suggestion to them is "Feedback matters"!

IE shares falling down, Chrome is coming up !

2011-11-03T20:00:00.000+05:30

Internet Explorer does less than 50 percent of world's web surfing, Chrome on the come-up -- Engadget: "Microsoft's finest still has a healthy 52.63 percent desktop market share, which gives it a sizable lead over the competition from Firefox (23 percent), Chrome (18 percent), and Safari (five percent)"

'via Blog this'

Learning from Twist Workshop Session

2011-10-03T16:19:00.001+05:30

Conducting a workshop on Testing tool is not new for me. In past I have given the same for QTP and other tools in my previous organization. How was this different ? What’s new for me ?

I noticed that these kind of sessions mostly revolves around tool. Those sessions were mostly like Feature drill down from Day-1 to last day nothing but just features. During my QTP days, I used to prepare a Power point presentation of features and snapshot of screen flows to illustrate it. What’s different in conducting Twist session. I actually thought of experimenting. I listed down all the critical features which I thought of discussing and then finalized on the application (which was Mingle , a Project Management Tool from ThoughtWorks Studios).

I started session with a persona of a QA on a testing team of Mingle (AUT) who will be involved in writing test cases, testing Story acceptance criteria and finally automating it. So it was easy for me to map the requirements of a Tester with the features of the Tool. If a tool is unaware of my day to day activity then it’s not the right fit. I believe that Test Automation tool should not be in isolation. So it was easy for me to demonstrate them how easy it is to write your test cases in Twist.

We started with identifying scenarios in the AUT, we then wrote couple of test scenarios and the relevant test cases. Once we were done with writing test cases, next comes the automation. So people just started automating the tests and again it was easy for them. When they started playing it back, they realized the data dependency and they themselves felt the need for Context (Setup and Teardown).

Apart from the basic features, I also felt that audience keeps comparing the tool under demo with the past tool they have used for almost all the features. They also give some feedback based on their experience of past tools. Some features I felt is always meant for advanced user or at least some one needs to use this tool for quite sometime to understand it. But with proper example you can always overcome that or otherwise a Sample Tutorial always helps.

Over all I liked the Workshop session and demonstrating Twist.

QTP (Keyword Driven) Vs. Twist (Page object pattern)

2011-09-16T18:35:00.003+05:30

Previous two posts Web Application Testing (QTP Vs. Twist) and Test Creation (QTP Vs. Twist) talks more about the features in the tool and ease of use. Following my two blog posts where I have compared QTP with Twist, this blog post is next in the series which will talk about Test framework and maintenance in both the tools.

When you launch QTP, you will notice that the Process Guidance pane shows you a path to achieve what QTP has popularized in the Testing community as “Keyword-Driven Testing”.

[Keyword Driven Testing is a technique that separates much of the programming work from the actual test steps so that the test steps can be developed earlier and can often be maintained with only minor updates, even when the application or testing needs change significantly]

-QTP Help File on “Keyword Driven Testing”

This technique relies on 3 pillars:

Test Steps
Keywords
Object Repository

So a tester generally writes Test steps using the keywords, tester with technical knowledge creates function library using built-in keywords or their own user-defined keywords and maintain Object Repository. So a slight change in application would require changes in Object Repository and then the functions.

[The keyword-driven methodology is especially useful for organizations that have both technical and less technical users because it offers a clear division of automation tasks. This enables a few experts to maintain the resource framework while less technical users design and maintain automated test steps. Additionally, after the basic infrastructure is in place, both types of users can often do their jobs simultaneously. ]

-QTP Help File on “Keyword Driven Testing”

So QTP Keyword Driven Testing approach actually requires a significant manpower to create a Test Suite and maintain it. Also if you are following this testing technique (Keyword Driven), you need to put a significant effort in creating the infrastructure and then start writing the test cases. So it takes up considerable amount of time before you see the benefit out of QTP.

On the other hand if you are using Twist, it’s like you download it, install it and start automating your tests right from the day-1. You see an immediate benefit from the tool unlike QTP (Where in you will have to wait for quite some time may be a month, 2 months or 15 days till the basic infrastructure is built). Twist do provide a user some guide line to use the tool but you don’t need such heavy infrastructure to write test. All you need is the domain knowledge or the application under test.

[Writing your scenarios at the right level of abstraction is critical to building an effective test suite. Here are a few guidelines that can help you get there.

Tests should be independent of the user interface of the application.
Tests should strive to be at the highest level of abstraction possible, without sacrificing readability.
Don't repeat yourself: Repeating a series of steps at any level -- at a scenario, or in the implementation can increase the maintenance overhead.
Use Extract Concept and Push to Implementation to achieve granularity that reflects your domain and also promotes reuse
Your test should ideally be an illustration of the functionality as opposed to some UI mechanics. For instance, if a test reads:
shopping cart
- enter "5" in units and "10.0" in price and select "air shipping" in shipping dropdown
Description of the UI clutters the intent here. Instead the test:
shopping cart
- create order for "5" units at price "10.0" for "air shipping"

helps clarify the intent.]

-Twist Help File on “Guidelines for your Test Suite”

Following a Page Object pattern is a nice way to group all the actions that are possible on a given screen.

Again Twist provides you more benefits than QTP when it comes to Test Suite Creation and maintaining them.

Test Creation (QTP Vs. Twist)

2011-09-14T14:30:00.000+05:30

After downloading QTP (Version 11), I started using it to test my sample application which is a project management tool. I must say that the “Process Guidance” stuff is really good for first time users. It tells them how to create and organize your test in a step by step manner (One thing which is not present in Twist).

So I started with creating a lay out of the project by creating Actions which are logical name for Test scenarios like “Login”, “Create Project”, “Create Card” in QTP.

Left side of the below image shows how the test looks in QTP and right side shows how it looks in the tool I am using Twist.

So once the project lay out was created in QTP I started recording the test. This is how it looks in QTP. QTP shows me the recorded script and I can add comments to that script to tell the intention of recording. However Recorded Script doesn’t help anyone apart from me to understand what this test does.

Let’s go to the tool I am using Twist. Once the project lay out is created, I can write what my test will do. Then I can further break down my test scenario into different test steps and record each of them one by one. Also all this is in plain English and any one can understand it.

So when I record the test for each step, it generates an underlying Java method which looks as shown below. I have highlighted the method name.

So my test can be easily read by any one on the team irrespective of their knowledge about the code. So I don’t need two Testing Tool/Software to write my manual test cases and then automate.

This is another reason why I would use Twist for test automation and not QTP.

Web application Testing (QTP Vs. Twist)

2011-09-14T12:31:00.000+05:30

I downloaded QTP (Trial Version 11) few days back and I thought of seeing what’s new in the tool.I have a Dell Machine with Windows 7 installed on it. Browsers installed on my machine are:

Firefox (Version 6.0.2)
IE (Version 9.0.2)
Chrome (Version 13.0.782.220)

QTP allows me to setup the environment before recording test. So I can navigate to

Automation –> Record and Run Settings. The pop below shows up. I can set the application URL there and when I pull the browser drop down, it just shows up Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Though I have Firefox, Chrome installed on my box, they do not shows up in the list. So when I opened the “HP QuickTest Professional Product Availability Matrix” pdf I was shocked to see the below matrix. Are you serious ?

If I am testing a web application I would want to test it on various browsers available at least Firefox (Version 4, 5, 6), Chrome (Version 12, 13) and IE 9 (on Windows 7).

I looked back at my tool which I am using right now (Twist) and I saw the list which appears below. Read more here about the supported web browsers.

Link:http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/twist-agile-test-automation/2.3/help/system_req.html

One reason why I would use Twist for web application Testing and not QTP.

Testing Web Application on Android Emulator using Twist 2.3

2011-08-17T12:37:00.001+05:30

Twist 2.3 supports Selenium 2. So let’s take a sample mobile web application to Test.

Application under Test: Wikipedia Mobile
URL: http://mobile.wikipedia.org/

Let’s say the basic test scenarios we want to automate is

Navigate to the URL
Search for "Thoughtworks Studios"
Open the link "Twist for Agile testing"
Verify the link "ThoughtWorks"

Let’s run through few steps which will enable us to do that.

Step 1: Create a new Twist project with Selenium 2.0 as underlying driver and Firefox as the browser and Click on Finish.

Step 2: On the New Scenario Page in Scenario Editor, create a new Business Workflow

Step 3: Start recording the steps. (This will help you record the test in Firefox.)

Step 4: Open the Project properties and Select the Twist Properties and click on the Selenium2 tab. Select Android Browser for the browser.

Step 5: Make sure the android emulator is running (Webdriver Installed) and pointing to the android server at “http://localhost:8080/wd/hub”. To install Android Emulator use the following help.

Step 6: Execute the scenario.

Refer the attached video which records the test on a browser and plays it back on Android Emulator.

Twist 2.3 is out and allows Emulator Testing

You can download Twist 2.3 here

Twist 2.3 is out !

2011-08-11T16:36:00.000+05:30

ThoughtWorks Studios just released Twist 2.3. Read more about it here.

Just a quick look into the new features and improvements.

Selenium2: Allows Recording & Playback of web application with Selenium2 (WebDriver).
Web App testing on Mobile: Allows you to record your scenarios on Firefox and replay the same on Android & iOS (Physical Device and Emulator)
New improved UI for Selective Propagation of Concepts, Project Configuration UI.

You can download Twist 2.3 here

Watch out for post on how to test your web application on mobile devices.

Twist – Let’s you get started pretty quick !

2011-07-28T20:49:00.001+05:30

I joined a Product team who creates a Software product. I joined as second QA in the team. Product has seen quite a few releases and the team has built a Testing Suite which has over 600 test scenarios. These test scenarios run on 3 OS Windows, Linux, Mac.600 tests means a well and huge structure already built in and not much of effort from my end. Oh but I then start worrying about time taken to comprehend the structure and look around how classes are organized, how are we tagging the test scenarios, how can I find what all scenarios are automated.

I used to think that automation tool sits in isolation. It’s needed when you want some test cases to automate. But we are using a tool which took away all my tension - Twist. So Twist allows me to write manual test case as well as automated ones at a single place and in a single suite. I don’t need 2 software; one to write manual tests and one to write automated tests. Well most of the testing projects have like this; write manual test cases in excel or other Test management tool and then automate it in QTP or some other tool. Twist avoids such duplication effort. That means, early in the cycle when I am testing story I can write test scenarios in Twist and can tag them as “to be automated” and with respective functionality. So down the line in QA cycle when I would get time I would start automating it and remove the tags based on our convenience.

Coming to the original problem of comprehending the Test Suite structure and adding on top of existing test cases. Twist allows you to write test cases in business language. From the above example it’s easy to comprehend that I want to create a Card with some description and verify if it shows up in the list. To you it might not sound a little confusing as to what card and what list but some one on project can easily understand it. So when I have to add further test cases, all I need to do is press Control + Space key which brings up the Auto – complete feature and help me write scenarios in a faster and more efficient way. This will bring up the list of all test steps which has been implemented in previous scenarios. So it’s easy for me to look through (refer the below image)

The whole suggestion comes up and narrows down the list based on the words I types in. When I type in multiple words only those steps comes in which has both the words present. Isn’t this a cool feature in a testing tool.

That’s why I say go ahead and give it a try. And do write to me or Twist team in case you want to share your experience with the tool.

Using Drag and Drop in Webdriver

2011-07-26T18:24:00.001+05:30

Today I was trying out to test the Drag and Drop feature provided in webdriver. First I searched for a website which allows me to perform drag and drop operations and came across a website “http://jqueryui.com/demos/”. On the top left you will see 2 items “Draggable” and “Droppable”. Those are of interest to us as of now to test the Drag and Drop feature if Webdriver.

Draggable: The draggable sections looks like this. So you have a web element which can be dragged around in the circle. API to be used for these kind of controls is

org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions.dragAndDropBy(WebElement source, int xOffset, int yOffset)

Sample code to drag this element to an offset is

WebElement draggable = browser.findElement(By.id("draggable"));
new Actions(browser).dragAndDropBy(draggable, 200, 10).build().perform();

Droppable: The Droppable sections looks like this. You have 2 elements i.e one draggable and the other one to drop into. API to be used for these kind of controls is

org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions.dragAndDrop(WebElement source, WebElement target)

Sample code to drag this element and drop into other control is

WebElement draggable = browser.findElement(By.id("draggable"));
WebElement to = browser.findElement(By.id("droppable"));
new Actions(browser).dragAndDrop(draggable, to).build().perform();

Hope this information helps, do write me in case you face any issues !

Note: I tried the above script on Firefox Version 5 and Internet Explorer Version 9.

Google + (Send Feedback link) – Tester’s View

2011-07-18T20:26:00.000+05:30

First thing: what compelled me to write this was “Send Feedback” feature on Google +. I assume you would be knowing a little about Bug Logging/Tracking tool. I have used quite few too. Pretty much all of them seems to work in isolation. Isolation as in you have a application to test and you found a bug. So you launch the Bug logging application and do a bunch of things:

1. Write the best describing short and concise Title.
2. Write the Steps: (How to reproduce this? What was expected? What really happened?)
3. Take a relevant screenshot and highlight the problem in that (A Picture speaks thousand words !)
4. Set Feature, Priority, Risk etc.

I felt I found a bug in Google + and I thought of sending it to them. I clicked on the “Send Feedback” link, so my whole page greys out and a small UI is popped up in right. By default “Highlight” is selected. So you just have to select a relevant portion of the UI where you think the Bug is and describe the issue in the textbox provided.

When I clicked on “Preview”, it launched a pop up with all the relevant details like the one you see in image below (Annotations, Page Information, Browser Information, Product Information, Page Structure). What else I could have wanted as a Tester :)
Amazing idea for a the next killer Bug logging tool. I also came across another tool BugHerd, brilliant concept (check it out !).

Great tool from Google guys.

Impressive Google +

2011-07-16T23:09:00.001+05:30

I am not a big Facebook fan but used to spend quite some time on it by looking into some scraps, some videos, laughing on comments, liking some comments (remember the Like button).

Got the news of Google +. Requested few colleagues to invite me so that I can join the Google + league (which is not yet opened publicly).

Reaction in first few minutes: wow what a neat application. No UI frills as you can see below. Default landing is on Home page, next icon is for Photos (Photos from your circles),next is your Profile, and the last one is most talked about Circles. Clicking on Circle will show you People in your circle, People who’ve added you, People you can find and invite.

Circle is quite an innovation in Google +. Not everyone I have in my Facebook friend list are at same proximity. Some are college friends, some are colleagues, some are friend’s friend and many more like this. I feel Google +has understood it properly and they have created Circles as a solution. It helps you maintain your privacy. I have a circle of Colleagues, circle of friends who studied together, circle of people who I don’t know directly.

So when I write something on my wall, I may not intend to share with the whole world, and Google + just allows me to control this. Also I can choose my videos and posts not to re-shared and commented by anyone. On the contrary on Facebook, comments make you little popular and adds spice to your social life on Facebook.

I wish Google could release an Enterprise version of Google +, it can replace the typical email stuff. Imagine like this, you have your whole org on Google +, you can have a Circle of “Dev Team”, “Test Team”, “Project Management”, “Release Management”, “Customer Support”. Best thing even if someone is not in your circle you can just add their email along with your selected circle.

They still need to add some more cool features, apart from the 3 shown below.

One good thing which I noticed on signing in to Google + is that they made good use of some of the user data they have. They pull in the data I have in my Google Profiles to create my Google + profile. Also they let you see how your profile would appear to others.

They have Gtalk enabled and in case you are a active gmail user, you will feel really happy ! So I would say just try it out.

Send me an email if you need an invite on Google +.

In a comfortable zone… sad but it’s reality of my life!

2011-07-02T22:12:00.001+05:30

Every morning I get up, I generally prefer to pick up the news paper (Times of India) and want to read something good. Good about the country, good about what we as people are doing, good about what government is doing for the country, some good articles in the speaking tree section, some good international news and some good financial news. Ahhhh… this seems like as if I am into some dream land and very much optimistic about everything. Well I am a little optimistic, in fact a little more than all of us (I feel).

I open the news paper and I read “Life in Tihar: Tea with jail official, chatting with pals”, “CBI books babu for Rs. 400 cr. loss”, “HC stays tree cutting along Sankey Road”, “Maria Susairaj set to walk free”, “Stray canines maul baby to death in city”. Well these are headlines of a national daily newspaper. My first instant reaction: Bloody hell ! Why do people bend in front of politicians, why shouldn’t they be treated as other criminals are. Next reaction: CBI seems to be quite powerful. But who will pay for this Rs. 400 cr. loss? Will it come to us in some ways of direct or indirect tax ? I still remember that the total bill on a dinner (occasion was my wedding anniversary) was Rs. 2700/- for just 3 persons. Out of that Rs. 2700/-, around Rs. 500/- was just taxes (Service charge, VAT, Cess). Well I am not complaining about Rs. 2700/- but about Rs. 500/- which was put on bill against some tax. Just because I earn 70,000/- a month doesn’t mean that I should be careless about my spending. Next reaction: Court can understand tree cutting and has issued a stay but the human killing is not understood properly. Maria Susairaj case is really a rarest of the rare case sighting the punishment which is meted out to the killer duo.

I was expecting some good news to be happy about as a citizen, to feel proud of being Indian. Sorry we follow the same old principle “Bad news sells more than good news”, I guess would be the reply of news paper publishing company and news channel. I think where am I in the whole scene ? What is there for me in the newspaper? I see an advertisement on the bottom right section of the newspaper “Brigade Showcase 2011”, some property expo by Brigade Group. That’s where I am ! I am a typical Indian citizen, who works in an IT company and dream to buy a good car, have good house, earn some money to live a little comfortable life. From Mon-Fri I am less worried about anything else on this earth, because my priorities are software development, testing, release etc. I have my own deadlines to meet, that is my job and I may not be most happiest when I do this but I get paid for this.

Saturday and Sunday I hang up those boots and become a normal citizen who thinks little beyond than his comfort zones, who is bothered about what his happening in his country, who is bothered about government performance, who is bothered about news in neighbourhood. On these 2 days I think I wish I could be doing something different, I could be making a little wider impact on people around me and also I could give something back to the society.

I see the problem in a different way: problem is not Congress government neither BJP nor the corrupt IAS officer. Problem is decline in the moral of the people, moral of the society. Congress, BJP, IAS officer, they are all composed of individuals. As an individual, I have compromised my honesty, as an individual I have become more greedy, as an individual I have downgraded myself morally. Nothing else on earth will force you to commit crime than your inner self who pushes you to these things.

My problem is I think these things only on Saturday and Sunday, because from mon-fri I am in my comfortable zone. I go to office, sit in air conditioned office with transparent glasses which helps me shield myself from what is happening outside. It’s sad but it’s reality. On mon-fri I still pay attention to those advertisement which come on bottom right, because they have been made to be a part of my so called “Social dream”.

How to install Webdriver on Android Emulator on Windows

2011-06-29T15:25:00.002+05:30

Following my previous post, I needed to install Webdriver on Android Emulator. I have Windows 7 installed and most of the instructions were for Linux, so I thought this might be helpful.

So even this is pretty straight forward. Let’s run through the steps I followed to install Webdriver:

Download “android-server-2.0.2rc3.apk ” from the following location http://code.google.com/p/selenium/downloads/list.
Copy the above downloaded file into folder “C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools”
Run the “Command Prompt” as administrator.
Execute “cd C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools”
Execute the command “adb install android-server-2.0.2rc3.apk”
We also need to set up Port forwarding, run the command “adb forward tcp:8080 tcp:8080"
This will make the android server available at “http://localhost:8080/wd/hub”
Confirm the following settings on your emulator : Settings -> Applications -> Development -> Check "USB debugging", "Stay Awake" and "Allow mock locations".
Launch the emulator, it will have Webdriver installed. When you launch the Webdriver, it will confirm “jetty started”

How to install Android Emulator on Windows

2011-06-28T19:36:00.004+05:30

As part of my testing work, I am currently working on using webdriver to test on Android. So I had to install Android Emulator on Windows 7. Below are the sequential steps and I hope it will ease some pain on getting Android emulator on your Windows 7 box.

Download the installer from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Install it to a location (like: C:\Program Files\Android)
Launch “SDK Manager.exe”
It will launch a “Android SDK and AVD Manager”. By default “Installed packages” will be highlighted. On the pop up “Choose Packages to Install”, there will be some packages selected already. Go ahead with the “Install”.

4. Once it is done, select “Virtual Devices” to create one for you. Click on “New” and enter some name. Target as “Android 2.2 – API Level 8”. Select Size as “512” and “Built-in” to be “WVGA854” and click on “Create AVD”.

5. Once done select the Virtual device you created and click on Start. You can find the “Start” button on the right panel in the above shown image. Clicking “Start” will launch another pop-up, just say “Launch” and proceed.

Technology Adoption Lifecycle

2011-06-23T19:21:00.001+05:30

Though there are many things I wish I could write and share with you all (what I learn at IIM), but I found this really worth and couldn’t resist. I am thinking of sharing some learning with you all going forward.

Today I had a class on subject “Management of Tech Products” and Professor suggested a book “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey A. Moore. Probably if you are associated with Product development and Management, this book would be a great source of knowledge and insight into product management. I would definitely recommend this!

As per the book mentioned above, there is something called “Technology Adoption Lifecycle“ model and it actually shows that a product marketer should focus one user group at a time. These are 5 different user segments who actually uses the product at different stages. Below attached is the picture of the same.

Leaving you with this so that you feel like knowing more about it ! (Food for thought)

Twist – First 3 minutes !

2011-06-17T23:55:00.000+05:30

Why first 3 minutes? Because I make my opinion in the first 3 minutes and one wrong direction will just spoil the whole show. So what all you need to know about Twist in first 3 minutes. This post is totally from a tester’s point of view and my personal opinion. So I will talk about features which as a Tester I would want to know in first 3 minutes of using Twist:

Creating My First Test Project

Launch Twist and then follow the navigation File –> New –> Twist Project. Enter some relevant project name, language is selected by default to “Java”. Click on “Advanced” and choose a driver. The moment you choose a driver (let’s assume I want to test a web application), you will be asked to choose a browser and provide a browser location.

Now once you are done with all these things, you are done with your Environment Set up and project formalities. What next?

Write your test

By default Twist gives you an empty scenario named as “NewScenario”. On top of the Scenario Editor you would see options like “Workflow”, “Rules Table” and formatting options like “Bold, Italic, Header”. Start with Workflow, click on it and it will create a blank workflow for you to start typing in your scenarios. On the upper right hand side of the scenario editor, you have “Record, Execute Manually and Execute” options.

Till the time you write down your scenario, there is no point in Recording. Twist enforces you to write down a set of workflow and then automate it. In my opinion writing down test cases helps me understand the flow much better and creates a mental picture of how would I go about automating (almost sequential events). Once you are done with laying down your workflow, you can go about recording it, by clicking on “Record” button. This is quite intuitive and needs no elaboration.

Know your options

A testing tool is powerful because it empowers a tester to achieve lot of things with just a few clicks. Till this point of time, you know how to create a testing project, how to write scenarios, how to record them. Let’s take a step further to complete one cycle. On the Left pane of the Twist IDE, you would see a tree structure with the project you created and scenarios you added. Right Click on the project and it would open a bunch of options for you to utilize. You can select “Execute All Scenarios in View” and this will run all your scenarios.

Another important aspect of a testing tool is it’s reporting capability. Twist creates a HTML report for you with details like “Success Rate” and execution time. Right Click on the project and select “Properties”, in the Properties window select “Twist Properties” and select the checkbox “Generate Local Report”. By default for any new project created, reporting is off. You can browse and choose the location or by default it will publish in “reports” folder. How to open the reports folder? In the Twist IDE press “Control +3”, and type in “Package Explorer”. Select the one highlighted in red below.

Once you open the Package Explorer, you would see your current project listed in that. Expand the project and you will see a list of folders along with “reports” folder. Expand the Reports folder and your report would be located with in another folder stamped with Date & Time. Double click the index.html file and you will see your test execution reports.

I hope the above things will not take more than 3 minutes for a tester to explore and feel confident about the tool. There are lot more interesting features in Twist to enjoy and you would really love them while automating. More about them in future posts.

Till then don’t just read the blog, download and try Twist.

Handling “Selenium (WebDriver) Exception: this.getWindow() is null”

2011-06-13T18:28:00.002+05:30

I was trying to create a simple script to do few things :

Launch Twitter
Click on “Sign in”
Log in with username "testmail" and password "password"

Relevant Webdriver script is:

public void launchTwitter() throws Exception {
        browser.get("http://www.twitter.com");
    }
public void clickOn(String string1) throws Exception {
        browser.findElements(By.className("promotional")).get(0).submit();
    }
    public void logInWithUsernameAndPassword(String string1, String string2)
    throws Exception {
        browser.findElement(By.id("username")).sendKeys(string1);
        browser.findElement(By.id("password")).sendKeys(string2);
        browser.findElements(By.className("submit")).get(1).submit();
    }

While trying to play it back on Firefox 4, script failed on below step

browser.findElement(By.id("username")).sendKeys(string1);

and stack trace looked like:

org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: this.getWindow() is null
System info: os.name: 'Windows 7', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.1', java.version: '1.6.0_24'
Driver info: driver.version: RemoteWebDriver
    at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Unknown Source)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.createThrowable(ErrorHandler.java:131)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.throwIfResponseFailed(ErrorHandler.java:105)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:409)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElements(RemoteWebDriver.java:203)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElementsByLinkText(RemoteWebDriver.java:221)
    at org.openqa.selenium.By$ByLinkText.findElements(By.java:218)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.findElements(RemoteWebDriver.java:180)
    at Twitter.goBack(Twitter.java:20)
Caused by: org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler$UnknownServerException: this.getWindow() is null
System info: os.name: 'Windows 7', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.1', java.version: '1.6.0_24'

It’s strange! So Google comes to rescue at this point of time. After searching I got that there are lot many others who are facing this issue.

Refer this for more detail: http://code.google.com/p/selenium/issues/detail?id=1438

If you don’t want to get re-directed I will post the quick solution, try

browser.switch_to.default_content

As per Simon, this is probably an issue with Firefox and not Selenium.

Just to note that this works perfectly right with Firefox 3.6.

Playing Back a WebDriver script in Firefox 4 behaves weirdly

2011-06-13T17:32:00.000+05:30

Well there are some issues with Firefox 4. So I had a script created to search some key words on Google. I tried playing it back and I find it failing. Not so impressive !

So my script looked something like

public void someGoogleSearchFor(String searchKey) throws Exception {
        browser.get("http://www.google.com");
        browser.findElement(By.name("q")).sendKeys(searchKey);
        browser.findElement(By.name("btnG")).submit();
        browser.findElements(By.linkText(searchKey)).get(0).click();
    }

I played it back in Firefox 4 and to my surprise I found the script failing on the last line

browser.findElements(By.linkText(searchKey)).get(0).click();

So when I watched the script playing back again, I notice that instead of putting the search text in the “textbox”, it just appended the text in the URL and failed on the last line of the code where it has to click the search result which contains this text.

When I played it back in IE, it works absolutely fine. This issue happens just with Firefox 4. Posted the same in Selenium community, let’s see if someone else is also facing this issue with playing back webdriver script on Firefox 4.0.1.

Pointing the post in Selenium group.

http://groups.google.com/group/selenium-users/browse_thread/thread/28c5bb586729a4f9/13adfbfe779383b6?lnk=gst&q=Playing+back+a+webdriver+script+in+Firefox+4+behaves+weirdly+Options#13adfbfe779383b6

Automating tests in Twist

2011-06-02T20:11:00.000+05:30

In past I have done quite some automation using C#, QTP and Loadrunner (yes using Loadrunner for functional test automation). From past 1 month I have started using Twist extensively. And it’s just an amazing experience !

I remember the readability of tests were limited only to me and the person I was working along with (when I was working on QTP or C# or LR). Though we use to give underlying methods a fancy name to convey the purpose of test but it must be a painful experience for a third person to extend and maintain it. And moreover business user wouldn’t make any sense out of it except the count of tests which has passed or failed.

Why I am talking about all this is because I was actually automating a test in Twist around the “Inline Concept” feature. So here in Twist team, we use Twist to test Twist. Quite a twisted statement. :)

Twist allows you to write tests in DSL (Domain Specific Language). So the advantage is my tests are more readable and functionally meaningful (in domain terms). Even business users can understand it and I don’t need to give them ‘gyan’ on how to comprehend the tests.

Just a snapshot of tests which will give you the feel. So when I want to add tests I just press Control + Space to see the list of actions which are written in English language and easy to understand and infer. It just eases my job. By the way someone else on the team has written these tests but the capability of Twist to allow DSL just takes away all my pain.

I will talk about Inline Concept in probably my next blog post, till then you can read more about DSL and how Twist is making a difference !

Twist provides Intelligent Recording

2011-05-20T16:17:00.000+05:30

Continuing from my previous post…

Twist allows you to write manual tests and then automate it. It allows one to create Hybrid, Automated as well as Manual test suite. So let’s take a situation where the application under test (AUT) is Flipkart mobile site (http://www.flipkart.com/m).

If you notice the site carefully, you will find that when you

Search for “Alchemist”, category shown is “Books”
Search for “Inspiron” category shown is “Computers”
Search for “Elvis Presley” category shown is “Music”

Below is a small video demonstrating the same. Please watch it in HD version.

So as a tester on the project I would write my tests in way shown below:

Search for "Elvis Presley" and verify category is "Music"
Search for "Alchemist" and verify category is "Books"
Search for "Andaz apna apna" and verify category is "Movies"
Search for "Formula1" and verify category is "Games"
Search for "HTC" and verify category is "Mobiles"
Search for "nikon" and verify category is "Cameras"
Search for "Inspiron" and verify category is "Computers"
Search for "ipod" and verify category is "MP3 Players/iPods"

While recording the actions for the above test using a Test tool, we would expect at least 9 different implementations (for each of the 9 test cases) but that's a dumb way of implementation I would say.

Let’s see how Twist do this. For the sake of time I have created a project and written the manual tests in one of the scenario. See the video and you will be amazed by the intelligence of Twist.

The Video shows recording the action:Searching “Elvis Presley” and asserting that the result was found in “Music” category. Sorry for the bad quality of video, please watch it in HD mode.

So when we finish recording for 1 test, actually all the test gets recorded. So if you notice before recording all tests appears in “brown colour” and post recording the test it turns black and so the other tests (which were also in “brown colour”). By the way brown is when the test is unimplemented and black is when it is implemented.

I am sure post reading this blog and watching this video you would be tempted to try it. So go ahead and download your trial copy of Twist from ThoughtWorks Studio and try it yourself.

Automation crucial for Agile’s success !

2011-05-19T14:00:00.001+05:30

Agile is incrementally building the whole project with smaller delivery cycles. I have written about that in few of my blogs http://www.nishantverma.com/2010/04/scrum-methodology.html . Automation in fact a good automation forms the core of agile project delivery.
I as a QA might not feel the need of automation much in earlier phase of project. But as we progress further, QA would start putting in estimate for “Regression Testing”. I remember my previous project where the regression phase used to take around 1-2 weeks depending on the features planned in the release or impact of refactoring. Trust me it’s very painful when you are following agile methodology and you don’t have automation in place. It’s a costly mistake. People at top thinks we are implementing agile and at the execution level people are little confused about that. :)
So in a typical agile methodology project, you need automation side by side your manual testing. You might struggle initially with the pace of QA sign-offs but down the line 4-5 months that automation will be life saver. All you would do in an iteration will be develop, test, automate new tests and run regression suite with every check-in. Needless to say fixing functional test suite is also accounted as QA activity in iteration.

So from a agile tester’s point of view, I have quite a lot to do on a simple project. So I would be lucky to have a tool/system where I write scenarios and mark them manual first and then just go ahead and automate it. Post automation just tag it to put things in proper place. And I think Twist do a brilliant job on this. Probably you should try it out !

Testing a Testing Tool “Twist”

2011-05-11T19:51:00.000+05:30

It’s been quite some time since I posted anything. I have been rolled off from my previous project and on-board to altogether a different stuff. I am testing a “Testing Tool” called Twist. You can find more about it from the hyperlink.

It’s a new experience for me. I have never before tested any Testing Tool, though I have done some tool evaluation in past. But trust me testing a testing tool is a mind blowing experience.

In past, I have used functional testing tools like QTP (8.0, 9.0, 9.2,9.5), Watin etc. But it’s a amazing tool. Twist allows you to play around with drivers like Sahi (for Web apps), Selenium 2.0 (for Web apps), Frankenstein(for Swing apps), SWTBot (for SWT/Eclipse apps).Recording facility is way superior than QTP (based on my experience). Will soon do some posts on the features of Twist tool very soon, let me get a hang of it.

Don’t get bugged by reading those posts, instead download and enjoy. You are most welcome to give/mail me your comments and feedbacks on the tool ! :)