Introduction:

Consumers in the technology market demand many things such as security, innovation, convenience, design, and more from their digital products and services. And among all their preferences, their top priority is to have all these features immediately available.

This raises a question about how companies can fulfill their customers’ demands. Of course, IT companies work around the clock to meet these requirements. How could you determine whether the product you have developed is up to expectations?

The answer is web services test automation. This technology will only help the software testing service providers to test the quality of the software products but can also have it all done quickly. Such advanced technology can help you fulfill both needs of customers; using a high-quality product of their desire, and having them in their hands as soon as possible.

So, if you don't know much about test automation then let us discuss it in this blog. In addition to that, we will also have a look at different types of web services test automation frameworks, as well as the challenges and benefits of test automation.

What is a Test Automation Framework?

A test framework follows a predetermined set of rules or guidelines for building test cases. Such frameworks consist of various types of tools that can help QA experts conduct a variety of tests on digital products.

Similarly, a web test automation framework is a collection of tools and processes that works together to support the automated testing of certain products. Such frameworks can perform various types of software testing on their own without any need for manual oversight.

Top Web Test Automation Frameworks

Selenium

Selenium is an open-source test automation framework. Although it has been one of the oldest frameworks in the market, it is completely capable of making test automation easy for modern web apps. You can see a Chrome CDP integration and many more features in the latest version of Selenium. It is also one of the widely used test automation frameworks by QA experts.

Cypress

Cypress is another top-trending test automation framework on our list. This tool provides such rich features that it has completely changed the UI automation framework mindset. Cypress is also an open-source framework that comes with a professional dashboard in a priced package. It also provides many developer-friendly features like easy installation and setup, dedicated windows for tests, debugging, and more.

Playwright

Being launched in 2020, this framework is relatively new but has gained a substantial amount of users now. The reason behind this can be their aggressive release strategy as well as well-documented code. Although it's an open-source tool, Playwright is still branded in association with Microsoft. This test automation framework is also considered as one of the pioneers of headless browser testing (another reason behind its popularity).

WebDriverIO

Just like Selenium, WebDriverIo has also been in the market for a long time. And the connection between these two top automation test frameworks doesn't end here. WebDriverIO is an open-source test framework that consists of selenium libraries for internal use. The framework is a part of the OpenJS foundation.

Appium

Appium is an open-source UI automation framework. Testers can use this framework to test native mobile applications for platforms such as iOS. Android, Windows SDK, and more. Appium offers an exceptional GUI for efficiently writing and inspecting the code of your mobile applications.

Challenges in Test Automation

1. Effective Communication in Team

When you have multiple people working on a common goal, it is necessary to keep all of them on the same page. Along with the complete quality analysis of the product, the testing team also has to provide a cost-benefit analysis and an ROI analysis to the higher management team. So, it is critical to have effective communication between team members otherwise the test automation experience may turn into a nightmare.

2. Selecting the Right Tool

It doesn't matter if you are implementing the best testing processes and methodologies if you aren't using the right tool. Your testing tool must fulfill your project requirements. Otherwise, the web services test automation would fail. And you won't know that you have delivered a faulty product to your customers until they come back complaining.

3. Demanding Skilled Resources

You need someone to manage your test automation tools. You need skilled personnel for the job. They have to operate the test automation frameworks, make them ready for the test and maintain them over time and adjust them for new projects accordingly. Not everyone can do this. You need someone who has experience in using such automation test frameworks.

4. Selecting a Proper Testing Approach

• How long will be the lifetime of an automation test suite?
• How to reduce the efforts in implementing and maintaining test suites and test scripts?
• How to generate helpful test metrics and reports?
• You know you have picked the right testing approach if it can answer these and many more such questions.

5. High Upfront Investment Cost

Using a test automation framework can be costly. Even if you are using an open-source framework, you will be only saving your licensing costs. You still have to pay for learning, training, operating, and maintaining these frameworks.

Benefits of a Web Test Automation Framework

Cost-Effective Procedure

You can save your code with common changes to the test data, page objects, and even to the reporting structure and more with the help of a test automation framework. This is not only a consumer-friendly testing process but also cost-effective as well.

Easy Scripting

Test automation frameworks ensure that at both levels, individual and team members, the coding is consistent. It is necessary because no two programmers would have the same style of coding which would lead to multiple testing. A test automation framework will consolidate all the coding data together to make sure that there isn't any duplicated code in the system.

No Manual Intervention

After starting the testing in an automation framework, everything will go step by step automatically. You don't even need to monitor the process and would directly get the test results. It saves a lot of time and effort as well as increases the accuracy of the tests.

Scalability Application

A test automation framework allows you to add updates to the product without the need of going through any complicated process. Let's say you want to transform a simple blogging site into a fully furnished website then you can only imagine the amount of work you have to put into it. But if you insert all the critical parameters in the automation framework, then you can have that website ready within a few minutes.

Reporting Made Easier, Faster

As we already discussed, there is no need to monitor the test scripts, everything will be done on its own once you start the test. The thing is, during manual tests, while people used to do everything on their own, it would take some time for them to come up with the results in comparison to the automated tests. The automation test frameworks tend to provide results faster and since there is no human intervention, the results are more accurate too. So, with automated testing, you can get more accurate results within a short time and without virtually no effort.

Segregating Tests

Test automation frameworks allow you to extract and store the test data in separate external databases like XML files, ODBC repositories, Excel files, and more. A test suite can cover all kinds of apps in a configuration process so the test would be done in just a few seconds.

Quick Modularity

A login code can be used for various test scripts in a test automation framework before it expires. This ought to make your automation testing faster, saving both your time and energy.

Recycle and Reuse

If you are using automation software then there is no need to develop a file every time, you can reuse it if the modules are the same. It saves your time from doing the same task multiple times whereas makes the entire process very smart and highly professional.

Conclusion

In this article, we have gone through the concept of web services test automation and discussed some of the best test automation frameworks available in the market. In addition to that, we also discussed the challenges as well as benefits that come with the use of these frameworks.

Although there are a wide range of benefits of using test automation frameworks, you can't completely ignore the challenges that come along the way. So be prepared to face and counter these challenges with unique solutions. After all, if you can leverage the benefits of advanced technology tools like automation frameworks then you might get left behind by your competition that doesn't hesitate in leveraging the popular trends to boost their business growth.

But don't follow a trend blindly. Do you have to check whether you need a web service test automation framework for your project? If yes, then pick the one that suits your requirements and keep an eye out for possible roadblocks and pitfalls.