Video First has just hosted it’s first training night in Ormeau Baths titled “A Crash Course in User Interface Automation”.

Getting Started with Manual Testing

The free training evening commenced with a quick introduction on why UI test automation is important and the advantages gained from their implementation (e.g. increased product quality / greater reliability / cost savings / etc). The participants then completed a few manual tests around website search functionality using a website of their choice.

These tests were then screen captured and uploaded to the Video First Platform where they could be played and reviewed.

Introducing Automated Testing

After that we started looking at various types of CSS selectors and how these are useful for selecting elements of a web page. CSS selectors are very useful for selecting HTML tags as part of an automated UI tests e.g. insert text in this search input, select and click this search button. This was then followed by some pizza / drinks (thanks Barclays) and then it was back to the main part of the evening – creating the first automated test!

The technologies used for automation included:

1. Java JDK 8 – Java was our programming language of choice (we easily could have used Python, JavaScript etc as well).
2. Intellij – our IDE (integrated development environment). IntelliJ is a world class IDE for development.
3. Selenide – Java based Selenium wrapper to make Selenium easier.
4. Chrome Driver – the glue between our code and Chrome browser.

Automated tests were created for Google and also against a random website. The last automated test was for the IMDB (movie database website) and was as follows (declared using Given / When / Then syntax).

This was a tricky test, especially as 2 hours previously quite a few in attendance had never used Selenium before! Finally, the automated test was uploaded to Video First and shared with everyone in the room. The following video shows one of the automated test being run in the Video First app.

Conclusion

Like the title of the night, it was indeed a crash course in UI automation testing and everyone learned something new. Another training night is planned which will focus on more advanced topics including Docker test containers and layered testing architecture – watch this space!