Test-driven development is something that every software developer should implement in their projects.
The success of using TDD, however, depends highly on how productive the developer can be while implementing code and application testing.
This is where automation tools come in.
Below is a list of 10 recommended testing automation frameworks/platforms and a short summary of their features.
Selenium
Selenium is, arguably, the most popular automated testing framework. It is a browser-based framework that works on different operating systems and browsers.
It features the Selenium IDE, which is Chrome and Firefox extension that allows the recording and playback of user interactions. For scaling tests (i.e, running on several machines) then Selenium Grid is the tool of choice.
The most popular tool in the framework is Selenium Webdriver, which is a collection of language specific bindings and allows for the creation of browser-based regression tests.
Perfecto.io
Perfecto is both a web and mobile app testing framework. It’s delivered as a SaaS tool and allows testing engineers to run their tests from anywhere.
The web testing tool provides for parallel testing of apps on different operating systems and browsers. It allows for a huge volume of daily tests to be run, and the tests are 50% faster than any other framework.
The mobile test tool allows engineers to test on both emulators and actual devices. Just like the web test tool, it allows for a high volume of test runs daily (10,000 executions).
Serenity
Serenity BDD’s slogan is “Automated Acceptance Testing with Style”. This is because Serenity’s unique angle is helping testers write world-class test reports and documentation.
Testing starts with the creation of user stories and acceptance criteria. Serenity then automates the acceptance criteria. Tests are automatically broken down into steps that make them more readable. Developers can easily run these tests against actual application executions.
Once tests are finished, Serenity creates detailed reports that include screenshots of the tests and all relevant information such as error messages and execution times.
Cypress
Cypress is a great tool to use for frontend or end-to-end automated testing.
Installing Cypress in a project is as easy as running a simple npm install cypress
or yarn add cypress
command. JavaScript developers who are used to unit testing tools such as Jest or Mocha will find writing Cypress test scripts a breeze.
Its dashboard makes testing more powerful and faster by allowing tests to be grouped by browser type, environment, package type, and so on. The parallelization feature allows developers to run more tests and test more features easily.
Lambda Test
LambdaTest is a leading test automation software for both desktop and web apps.
It allows for live and interactive testing of both publicly hosted and local machine hosted web applications and websites.
LambdaTest also allows developers to run Selenium test scripts with its Browser Testing Grid. It is a very powerful and versatile suite that also integrates with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Circle CI, and Travis CI.
Now the coolest part is that it allows for geo-testing, meaning web applications can be tested for how they perform depending on which location in the world they are being accessed from.
TestProject.io
TestProject’s community is probably one of the biggest among those in the testing community. It is an end-to-end and API cloud hosted test framework.
As an open-source project, users get easy access to updates and can even participate in its improvements. It is ready for use with Selenium with all of its pre-packaged dependencies.
With its myriad of integration tools, it allows for testing on different browsers, and even in Docker.
One of the best things about TestProject is it allows non-coders to perform testing through its Scriptless Test recorder.
Katalon Studio
Another open-source API, web, and mobile testing suite is Katalon Studio. It is one of the most complete testing suites in the entire list, with features like recording, auto-generating test scripts, and powerful integrations.
It is a testing framework that is easy to start (yes, even for non-coders) but is powerful enough for scaling.
Katalon Studio works well with existing CI/CD setups. For instance, it's easy to integrate it with Github or Gitlab’s continuous testing tools. This makes it great for Agile teams.
OpenTest
OpenTest is another open source tool that automates testing for API’s, web, mobile and desktop applications. It is mostly used for functional testing.
It still has lots of limitations as there are some test scenarios that are not yet supported. However, it is very good for beginners and non-coders alike since it uses plain English keywords for writing test actions.
Some of its most notable features include web testing with Selenium, mobile testing with Appium, keyword-driven testing, parallel testing, and data-driven testing.
AccelQ
AccelQ is a codeless test automation platform that is artificial-intelligence based. As such, it is best used for Agile development as it allows for rapid building and easy introduction of changes in the project.
The platform allows for API and end-to-end testing. The AI backbone provides predictive analytics that help in accelerating the test script generation. It has an intuitive and easy to use UI that allows even beginners to get started quickly.
Conclusion
The choice boils down to, not surprisingly, your particular use-case.
However, given the extensive capabilities of each of these tools, it is understandably difficult to select one. The beautiful thing about a lot of them being open source is that development teams can use one for a particular project, and another for a different one.