Automated Testing

Todays focus is on how you can test your applications automatically to detect bugs early and improve your code quality.

I want to introduce you to the concept of automated testing. In order to make the content accessible to as many users as possible, I will not use code examples and concentrate purely on the underlying idea instead. Once you understand them, you will have no problems implementing the concept in the programming language of your choice.

First of all: What is automated testing and what advantages does it offer?

Automated testing describes writing code that tests your actual code. Your source code consists of the production code and test code.

Think of how you may test the functionality of your software. You start the application and log in with your user account if necessary. You navigate to the feature you are working on and perform your tests. You repeat that for different possibilities.

You can see from the short description that the whole process is quite time-consuming. Each change requires a new run through the procedure and new functions increase the time exponentially. And this is exactly where automation comes into play.

Automated tests can be performed at the push of a button and repeated as often as required. In addition, they run much faster than manual tests. The repeatability means that no more time is required to test existing functionality when adding new features. Basically, bugs are better found because no test scenarios…