List of Eight Best Practices for Test Automation:
A list of relevant practices to improve system wide test-script implementation and reuse is given below & all these suggested practices may be used according to the adopted technique:
1) When recording a script for a test case, some sort of initialization may be necessary - such as database connection, variables, and functions - which can be shared between test cases of the same use case or even between many use cases.
2) Each script may be recorded independently from the others, having its own variables, initialization, and so on, although it would be better to share common objects for test scripts, in other words, use the concept of modularity.
For example, if it is necessary to clean up a database for a specific use case before executing any test script, or if there are common script steps, a text file to store these steps may be used and later on can be included at scripts execution time. If these steps change, only one place will have to be modified.
3) Another practice is to define functions executing a common activity for many scripts, and only call it from those scripts.
4) A clean and robust code must be implemented. Comments should be made for important lines or code blocks. While implementing, possible maintenance should not be discarded.
5) When a flow alteration or verification point in a script is recorded again, there must be some care to update only script sections where there really must be a change.
6) To delete any trash shown in a form, before inserting any data, a combination of keys should be used ("HOME", "SHIFT+END" and "DELETE") when recording an action of data input.
7) If test scripts are recorded initially from a prototype (applicable when the actual application is still not available), it is necessary to certify that names of fields and IDs of clickable icons on screen will not be altered. If they are changed, the script will need an update at a later date.
8) Dynamic data for test scripts should be used (test data must be separate of scripts). The immediate benefit is that, if additional data is needed, more records can simply be added; there is no need to modify the test script.
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