Java Testing Weekly 2 / 2016

There are many software development blogs out there, but many of them don't publish testing articles on a regular basis.

Also, I have noticed that some software developers don't read blogs written by software testers.

That is a shame because I think that we can learn a lot from them.

That is why I decided to create a newsletter that shares the best testing articles which I found during the last week.

Let's get started.

Technical Stuff

  • Automate Amazon: ProductEnums and ProductObjects is the fifth part of T.J. Maher's Automate Amazon tutorial, and it describes how you write Selenium tests which ensure that you can add products into your shopping cart. This post provides good advice on linking the persisted test data with your test cases. If you are not already using enums for this purpose, take a look at this blog post.
  • Chess TDD 56: Threatened Pieces is the latest episode of Eric Dietrich's famous Chess TDD series. This video explains how you can handle the concept of check and use TDD when you add this feature into your chess engine. I enjoy Eric's teaching style because he seems to be able to speak and code at the same time. If you have 25 minutes to spare, and you don't mind that Eric uses C#, you should watch this video.
  • Get the Most out of Testing with Spring 4.2 is a recording of the SpringOne 2GX talk that was given in Washington DC by Sam Brannen and Nicolas Fränkel. It covers the latest changes of the testing support of Spring Core, Spring Boot, and Spring Security. The talk is about 90 minutes long, but if you aren't aware of these changes, you should do yourself a favor and watch this video (these changes are really cool).
  • ES2015 Page Classes demonstrates how you can create elegant page classes by leveraging the improved class support of ES2015. If you don't understand the fuss about ES2015, this blog post might open your eyes (it opened mine).
  • Robot Framework Tutorial 2016 – Installation is first part of Codecentric's "new" Robot Framework tutorial (they wrote one in 2012). It describes the different installation types (standalone jar file or Python installation) and helps you to complete the installation. I have always wanted to take a look at Robot Framework, but I haven't been able to find a good tutorial. This one looks very promising, and I hope that it will help me to write my first tests.
  • Writing Better Tests With JUnit is an excellent blog post that explains why you should pay extra attention to your test code and gives six tips that help you write test code that is both easy to read and maintain. If you want to know how you can write documentation that is always up-to-date, you must read this blog post.
  • Writing Unit Tests With Spock Framework: Introduction to Specifications, Part One is my blog post that helps you to create your first Spock specification and understand its structure. If you have an open mind and you are ready to write your tests by using Groovy, you should take a look at this blog post.

The Really Valuable Stuff

  • 93 Most Popular Software Testing Blogs In 2015 showcases the 93 most popular software testing blogs of 2015 (surprisingly). If you want to improve your testing skills by learning from the masters, this list is a good place to start.
  • An approach to refactoring test automation is a war story that describes how a group of testers refactored parts of their existing test suite by using coding dojos. This post provides good advice on selecting the refactored parts and doing collaborative refactoring.
  • Blackbox testing microservices (unfortunately this post has been removed) argues that if you want to verify that your application is working correctly, you have to do more than write just unit and integration tests for your microservices. This blog post describes the concept of blackbox testing and identifies the requirements of a useful test case. If you haven't written end-to-end tests for an application that uses the microservice architecture, you should take a look at this blog post.
  • Facing the future of software testing one change at a time is an interesting post that describes how the role of a software tester could change in the future. I like its vision of the future, but I find it a bit sad that we are still labeling people by using titles such as tester and developer which suggest that developers create all the value and testers test. Why can't we agree that we create value together?
  • One thing not to forget when you are done testing argues that after a software project is over, you should write a short report summary report that describes your testing activities and identifies the problems that you found during testing. Even though this blog post talks about manual testing, I think that you could benefit from writing a similar report that talks about automated testing. This would help you to share information with other teams and write better tests in the future.
  • Start Writing Tests – They Don’t Have to be Perfect is a very important blog post because it helps you to write tests for an existing application that has no tests. The problem is that you cannot test everything right away because this has a very low return of investment. Also, you might not be able to write unit tests because the code is a mess. This blog post introduces four tips that help you to select the right kind of tests and write tests one test at the time.
  • Software testing with Oculus Rift and First thoughts – Testing with Oculus Rift describes the challenges you will face when you are testing VR applications. Because no one has a lot experience from writing applications to these devices and the user interface of these applications is totally different than anything we normally see, the challenges are unique as well.
  • Questioning The Premise Of Testing is a very good blog post that explains why manual testing (and especially exploratory testing) is very valuable. I agree with the author and I wish that no one would have to write this kind of blog posts.

It's Time for Feedback

Because I want to make this newsletter worth your time, I am asking you to help me make it better.

P.S. If you want to make sure that you don't ever miss Java Testing Weekly, you should subscribe my newsletter.

2 comments… add one
  • T.J. Maher Jan 13, 2016 @ 16:24

    Automated Amazon: Write A Shopping Cart Test:
    The latest chapter of my "Automated Amazon" project, where I have been practicing writing an automated test framework, has been published. Part 7 of 8. http://tjmaher.com/

    • Petri Jan 13, 2016 @ 21:36

      Thanks for the heads up. I read your blog post and decided to include it in the next Java Testing Weekly.

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