WebSocket testing

A WebSocket is a standard protocol for two-way data transfer between a client and server. It is supported by all modern browsers. Why this post? My know-how of WebSocket connections was very limited. When I had to test an application which involved a WebSocket connection, I couldn’t find much information on how to go about testing it. It took me […]

CircleCI nightly automation

A Qxf2 client is using CircleCI for their continuous integration and deployment needs. We decided to run a small subset of critical tests in our automation suite against every new commit and deploy. We also run our entire automation suite, which takes longer, once every night. This post outlines how we setup CircleCI to achieve this setup. Why this post? […]

How to compare PDFs using Python

Problem:How do you compare two PDF files programmatically using Python? Adobe makes it easy to compare the changes in two PDF files. However as testers, we sometimes need to compare a lot of PDF files (especially reports!) against some preset baselines. In these cases, it helps to have a script that can compare PDF files and tell you if they […]

Connecting to BrowserStack from CircleCI containers

Problem: How do I connect to BrowserStack from CircleCI’s build containers? Why this post? A recent Qxf2 client was using CircleCI for their continuous integration and deployment needs. Partnering with our client, we had identified that it would be useful to run a minimal set of automated GUI tests as part of their continuous integration and deployment process. The GUI […]

Xvfb plugin for Jenkins

Problem: Error while running Selenium tests via Jenkins on a Ubuntu machine. WebDriverException(“The browser appears to have exited ” selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: The browser appears to have exited before we could connect. If you specified a log_file in the FirefoxBinary constructor, check it for details. Why this post? We faced this issue when we were trying to run our Selenium tests […]

Introduction to TestRail

Problem: Many Start up companies don’t have their test cases organized TestRail is comprehensive web-based test case management software to efficiently manage, track and organize your software testing efforts. Why this post? Many start ups use google docs or excel to document their test cases. Though the process may be easier and cheaper to maintain, they are not visual in […]

Python Appium tests on different Android versions

Problem: UI element identifiers are not consistent across mobile platforms. Mobile is eating the world. However mobile operating systems are not yet fully mature. For example, UI element identifiers change between versions of the same OS. They also look different across Android and iOS. This causes automation scripts to be brittle. We hit this problem recently. We were writing automation […]