Selenium Automation is not about embedding multiple tests and finding bugs and issues. A proper code understandable code is as essential as creating tests programs.
When you start working with automation, you will find several approaches, frameworks, techniques, and tools to add to your automation code, but incorporating these does not guarantee a clean and perfect code.
Sometimes, working with any of these versatility increases the code complexity rather than solving the issue or providing better flexibility.
Before writing an automation code, it’s crucial to draw the clear objective of automated UI testing and the exact track to achieve this. You might think that a purpose is enough to write a clean code per the track, but it’s not that easy.
To write a clean code, you need to consider some best practices. These are-
8 Best Practices To Write a Clean Automation Code
There are many different practices for writing clean automation code, from naming to structuring, but we have filtered out the top 8 to save your time to focus more on testing cases.
1. Naming Convention
Consider this amongst the essential rules to focus on transitioning from manual to computerization or composing a proper code in the desired coding language. Following appropriate naming conventions would assist in simpler comprehension of the written code and its sustenance. This suggests naming all the variables, classes, packages, and methods.
For instance, the method name should mainly focus on the process employed. For
example: naming a method used for the registration of a new user as “REGISTER_USER().”
Such specific method names would assist in the maintenance and make it more readable.
The same goes for the various variable names; instead of assigning them some random alphabet or some word such as a, b, or c, try using the specific word that would imply the respective variable’s intention.
2. Sleep Does Not Improve Stability
The greatest belief we verge to speculate, mainly when we are fresh to this computerization industry, is that furnishing a considerable amount of hold to our code, essential or needless, will efficiently oversee the script. Contrarily, the script becomes too brittle and raises the all-around execution duration.
The crucial problem with this sort of stagnant sleep is that we aren’t conscious of the burden of the appliance on which we perform trials, and therefore these might oversee breaks.
Accordingly, it would be best to avert thread sleep or conserve a more excellent computerization code. An adequate strategy to use aspects in your scripts is condition binding. The script can stay like a human until a distinct circumstance is fulfilled—for instance, loitering until a specific component is noticeable or not.
The detailed and expressive wait is further resourceful as an alternative to formulating a better automation program.
3. The Three R’s-Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
It is essential to make sure that the methods that we get are broken into different parts to make them more simple and avoid complexity. Several functions could lead to complicated procedures.
For instance, keeping your registration feature and the login feature could make it more complex; hence keeping them separate would make more sense and increase the readability of the code.
Do not paste the same code everywhere, which would increase the lines of code and cause unwanted duplication in the program. Optimizing the written code is the main factor affecting code stability, making it a promising automation program.
Another efficient method could be recycling; it would be beneficial for writing a promising code. Changing the entire method for automation would make your framework brittle. Try to make modifications to the existing method rather than change the whole method, even if it is challenging, as this would benefit you in the long run.
4. Structure Your Tests Well
Structuring your tests will make the program easier to comprehend and reduce the efforts during its maintenance. You would be able to regulate the flow of the program through the usage of annotations offered by several frameworks such as JUnit and TestNG.
For instance, using @BeforeClass could assist you in organizing your time-consuming aspects, such as connecting to the database and managing the browser. Such methods would help the tester know what the process performs and at what instant it has been called.
Just think how easy it would become, only if you know what the process does and all other parts of the program are already organized as per their functions. You could use @Afterclass annotations to assist you in performing cleanup actions such as disconnecting to the database and turning off the present browser trial.
5. Comprehensive Validation Of Your Tests
Functioning as a QA, you must know it mainly assesses the anticipated and actual meets, which goes for the automated code. Suppose, if the code does not have a proper validation, writing the same would never be of any worth as it wouldn’t have any significance.
Generally, all the user activity should be assessed as the test case strides, substantiate the perception of an aspect, or speculating the typography tips, textual articulation, divert to a web page, or any pictorial validation. It could even be regarding the evaluation of the outcome through the database.
In case the validation fails to ensure, the oversight message is exhibited so that an individual could discover what didn’t go right. At the same time, the massive blunder you make is validating the code by composing it such that it could get through the validation process.
6. Making Your Tests, Data-Driven
Testing is more beneficial when experimenting with numerous data types; the same is credible when composing a more excellent automation program for assessing a web app or a different application.
In computerization, the main element is to assess your test code from numerous aspects of data instead of composing various test scripts for every data. You can attain this effortlessly through the data-driven assessment framework.
It assists in stocking the test data input into an external database like the text files, CSV files, excel files, XML files, and ODBC storage. This information is called in the scripts and repeatedly performed throughout the similar test code.
7. Check For Reporting
An automation program will have no worth if it does not reveal the outcome. So, to optimize your task as an automation creator, it’s crucial to understand which test code enacts earlier and which declined looked after with screenshots.
The reasonable ROI you can indicate to your stakeholder is through the reporting. Showing those comprehensive summaries furnish transparency and lessens the verification period of your experiment execution scripts. You can obtain a summary through several methods such as TestNG HTML report production, JUnit record production, or the Extent archive.
8. Focus On Cross Browser Testing
Every web app nowadays backs multiple browsers as well as their editions. Your program must target numerous browsers instead of propelling them for a particular browser. Executing code on a specific browser snatches the cross-browser compatibility of your program.
Conduct cross-browser applications to ensure your app gives a smooth consumer experience throughout all the primary browsers; you could expand the computerization for this testing—frameworks such as TestNG help to perform a test throughout numerous browsers effortlessly.
Selenium With LambdaTest is One Pair For Automation Testing
A clean automation code makes Selenium automation testing easy. Still, it’s impossible to make your code clean and readable without being aware of effective practices to reduce unnecessary elements from your automation code. With our listed practices, you will make your automation code clean, and with LambdaTest, you will make your complete automation testing smooth.
LambdaTest comes up as one of the best Automation Testing frameworks with popular Automation Testing tools like Selenium, Cypress, Appium, and HyperExecute. Selenium among these is the most prominent, with all the necessary tools to test your application for bugs or issues.
LambdaTest is a cloud-based cross-browser comprehensive testing platform that supports modern Automated Testing frameworks like Selenium and Cypress. LambdaTest provides automated, manual, and live-interactive testing for over 3000+ Real Browsers and Operating Systems online and has gained the trust of over 600,000+ users in 130+ countries.
So, get set to kick start your Automation Testing journey with us!
