samedi 27 février 2016

Should I put my automated regression tests inside a web application?

Question

Is it worth building a web application front-end for my department's automated regression tests? I've searched quite a bit and I don't think anything like this exits. Basically the web application would allow a user to specify a URL, expected inputs, and expected outputs and an expected return URL. On the back-end a headless browser would be running on the server to test the scenario just defined by the user, most likely using calls to a headless browser... I've searched quite a bit to see if something as simple as this exists but I haven't had any luck. I've found lots of tools for allowing programmatic operation of browser commands but a web front-end for testing another web application I have not.

Background

My team has dedicated automated regression tests that the testers run on their local machines. The tests are written in Python, utilize some Selenium integration plugins, and use an excel spreadsheet as input on what to test. They are maintained by the QA department.

Problem

  • Nobody outside the QA team knows how extensive these regression tests are because they exist only on individual laptops.
  • They have no central repository, and the dev team has no means of actively updating these tests as we build new features. We must leave it 100% up to the QA department.
  • The business analysts don't have access to the results of these tests. Because of all this, a lot of uncertainty exists around our automated testing increasing reluctance to change things without instructing the QA team to perform full scale manual regression tests...

This has led me to consider putting all of our Selenium tests in the cloud behind a user-friendly web front-end that anyone can use and access from anywhere. They could then easily create new tests using dropdown menus. Everyone, developers, testers, and business analysts, can see whats covered in a test sequence and update them as we add new features. I believe this would also make it easier to have Jenkins jobs trigger tests to run at timed intervals if web application exposed web service hooks for jenkins... But I feel like perhaps I'm re-inventing the wheel. Is what I'm proposing to build worth it?

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