You know what’s a common word associated with test automation scripts? “Fragile.”
A script breaks when object properties change. This means the development team must stop writing new scripts for the app; instead, go back, troubleshoot, and fix it. However, identification maintenance is easier said than done.
When done manually, it can take up to 15 minutes per occurrence. That’s because the team has to inspect the object to see the new property value or find new properties to use before updating the script or object repository and retrying it.
Even in modern software development, where automated testing is integral to the development cycle, issues arise when automated tests fail, as they often do.
This causes the same delays in the schedule as the development team scrambles to write new scripts. But what if there was a way for those tests to detect imminent failures and proactively fix themselves? That’s exactly what self-healing automation is all about.
In this blog post, we’ll offer a brief guide to how self-healing test automation works and why it’s so important to modern development cycles. Let’s get started.
What is Self-Healing Test Automation?
Essentially, self-healing test automation updates your software tests automatically whenever you make changes to your app code or to the testing environment.
This ensures that the test scripts are always in sync with the latest version of your app so that your development cycle can run as planned each time, making it a smarter alternative to traditional testing.
Why Use Self-Healing Test Automation?
Traditional automated tests are designed with a fixed definition of what the software tool’s components are.
So when those components get upgraded, you’ll have to manually go and update those tests to reflect the changes — a time-consuming process. With self-healing, your tests can proactively analyze the app for changes and absorb them, making for more resilient testing.
The benefits of this kind of self-healing include:
1. Fewer failed tests
With self-healing, tests update themselves to meet the requirements of relevant scenarios, reducing the amount of time spent on fixing failed tests and avoiding delays in app development and release.
2. Avoids object flakiness
Errors like “NoSuchElementException” lead to flakiness in test design, over which the QA team has little control. This means that they can have a hard time determining how stable their test cases really are. With self-healing, test designs get automatically updated for the app in question, reducing the risk of failure.
3. Lower costs of maintenance
Having your team constantly make the updates to tests is expensive, and an inefficient use of their time. Self-healing helps cut down on your maintenance overheads and keeps your team focused on the critical tasks.
4. Quicker feedback loop
With self-healing, your dev team gets much quicker updates on code issues, allowing them to make the necessary changes before the issues compound.
5. Enhanced test coverage
The self-healing test automation strategy allows your QA team to build a resilient and effective test suite that they can apply across multiple apps and features. This improves overall software delivery times and makes for higher ROI on your testing budget.
6. AI integration
You can integrate your self-healing mechanism with other AI tools that refine its correcting capability and enable it to predict potential issues with greater accuracy.
How Self-Healing Test Automation Works
Self-healing test automation typically involves the following steps:
1. Understanding the status of app testing
First, the test mechanism monitors the app to see exactly what the latest version looks like and how it differs from the previous version.
2. Identifying each element
The mechanism gathers multiple attributes like Name, CSS Selector, ID, XPath, and others to gain a complete understanding of each element, ensuring it can locate those elements later even if the software undergoes updates.
3. Detecting any code errors
Spotting and correcting these errors early prevents extra time spent on troubleshooting later on.
4. Fixing broken test cases
Self-healing involves the use of algorithms that can proactively repair broken test cases so that they remain relevant over time. This entails searching for an element using its primary attribute, and then using secondary identifiers if the element cannot be located at once.
For instance, if an eCommerce app has changed the location of its navigation menu and changed the options under it, the test can automatically flag the failures that arise from selecting the old options and replace them with the new options.
5. Validating the new test case
Once the fix is complete, the self-healing mechanism runs a check to verify that the test case now works as intended. If it doesn’t, the algorithm will review the failure for context and try alternative options, or it might flag the matter for a manual review. The goal is to update the test script to reflect the updated element attributes for future rounds of testing.
6. Learning over time
At the heart of self-healing test automation is its ability to learn from each correction and keep improving its ability to predict and address issues.
Self-Healing Test Automation Examples
Let’s understand the concept better with the following examples:
1. Test script auto-correction
Many test automation frameworks detect application changes, such as Cypress, Selenium, and Playwright can detect app changes and suggest or apply updates to test scripts. For example, if a form label changes from “User ID” to “Username,” the automation framework will fix this on its own.
2. Dynamic wait mechanisms
Perform self-healing tests to adjust the waiting period dynamically based on element readiness or visibility. Don’t opt for fixed wait times. In this case, a test waits for a page to load completely before it interacts with elements. This keeps failing because of a premature interaction at bay.
3. Self-healing API tests
If you want to automatically make changes in API responses, ensure scheme updates, or fix request structures without failing, self-healing test automation can help with that, too. In case an API response structure changes but the core data remains as it, the feature modifies its verification logic.
4. Object repository healing
Some automation testing tools like Selenium maintain an object repository. This is the place where multiple locators are stored per element, which, in turn, enables automatic switching to an alternative locator if the primary one fails.
5. AI element recognition
You can use AI automation tools to recognize elements based on appearance rather than static locators through computer vision or AI/ML technologies. For example, if the structure of a web form changes but the submit CTA button looks similar in terms of shape, color, or text, then AI can identify and interact with it.
In Summary
In agile methodology, apps are continuously built and tested in short cycles. This can make it tedious to maintain test cases as the app itself is constantly iterating and changing. Self-healing test automation minimizes the headache by automatically updating test cases.
Source: This blog was originally published at testgrid.io
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