Automation Testing has become one of the most critical topics in the modern Software Development Industry. In this Era, the complexity of the applications has made it almost impossible to verify the functioning of the application without test automation. A human developer can’t perform all the stages of the testing application in the stipulated amount of time. Moreover, due to the intense competition in the application Development Industry, any delay in the delivery process can drastically affect your company’s reputation.
Therefore, web development companies must incorporate test automation in the development Framework as soon as possible. However, the advancement of Technology has also given rise to a lot of options in the Automation Testing Framework market. Jest Automation Testing is one of the top choices in this segment.
Most developers prefer to use Jest when they are working on JavaScript or the Typescript programming language. This is because Jest allows the developers to easily create the test and iterate them during the development process. Moreover, the simplicity of Jest also makes it a very good tool to develop while using TDD. This article will focus on the basic knowledge of Jest and everything that you need to know to start testing with this automation framework. We will also discuss the main reasons that make Jest a great testing tool.
The Reason to Choose Jest
- In this competitive application Development Industry, it is impossible to recommend any tool without verifying that it has some critical advantages over all the alternatives available in the market. So, let’s take a quick look at some of the critical factors that help to make Jest stand out from the competition:
- This tool is very simple and fast. This feature also makes it suitable for performing the prototyping process.
● The developers can simply add the argument “–coverage” and generate the code coverage reports. These reports provide vital information related to the effectiveness of the test code.
● The error reporting process during the test execution is rich and valuable. It saves a lot of time during the development stage and helps to quickly deliver the end product to the users.
● The tool comes with enriched documentation that helps the new developers to get along with it. Moreover, it also has a huge community of enthusiastic developers who are always ready to help the starters.
● The Jest tool provides a unique migration opportunity. This means that the developers can easily migrate an active project and switch to using the Jest testing framework. The code mods module ensures that there isn’t any error or contradiction between the two sets of codes.
● The developers must remember that Jest is much beyond any other ordinary or basic test Runner. This is because it provides various advanced features that help to improve the testing efficiency and satisfaction for the developers. For instance, some of the advanced features are auto lock models, module methods and setup coverage threshold. It also provides support for multiple projects in the same Runner and also customer resolvers including webpack and Babel.
● Finally, it also comes with an easy learning curve that ensures that new developers do not have to spend multiple hours learning this tool. It also helped the companies to save the extra expenses that they would spend on the training programs. It is yet another point to justify the economical nature of this Automation Testing tool.
Now that we have discussed the main reasons for choosing Jest automation testing, let us discuss the vital factors that will help us to set up the testing process.
Performing Tests with Jest
To begin with Jest automation testing, the developers have to first create the project and install the Jest package. You will have to run the “ npm init” command. The developers must remember that the command line terminal will provide several question marks after the initialization of this command. Then you will finally find a file named package.json that will have a simple Jest project. After the creation of the project, developers have to install Jest using the command “npm install –save-dev jest”. This was the initial step for beginning the testing process. After this, the main stage is to create the text file and execute it. The developers must remember that node JS and node package manager are compulsory for performing Jest automation testing. You can install it either using the npm manager or directly from the Windows Installer.
For running the tests while using Jest automation testing, the developers can go with two different approaches. The first option is to update the ‘scripts’ element that will be present inside the package.json file. The second way is to directly install the Jest file on the system and run the content from it. The developers can choose any of these two methods according to their preferences. After running all the required tests, the system will automatically print a summary of the execution and highlights in the console. All the tests that went well and did not have any errors will be shown in green and the others will be shown in red. This feature also helps to improve the overall test coverage.
Group testing and Delta Testing with Jest
There are certain important keywords that the developer must be aware of while performing Jest automation testing. These keywords will also be useful while performing the test in the test-driven development environment. So, let us take a quick look at some of the major ones:
● Expect: This keyword helps the developers to verify that the values provided in the test meet the conditions that have already been specified. That will consist of a value that the developer is expecting to test against another value within the Limited expectations. The developers can perform this process with the help of different matches that are available for the validation of different combinations. This combination can be made according to the requirements of the development project. Some of the common combinations that we can use in the JEST project are: ‘.toBe()’, ‘toContain()’, ‘toContainEqual()”, etc.
● Test: It provides all the data related to what a function should perform. Using this keyword, the developers can also test various units of the same function. For instance, it can be used to test whether any specific attribute is present in the input provided by the user. These keywords are particularly useful for testing applications that will consist of a lot of user interactions.
Delta testing is the process of running the test cases in watch mode. This process helps to execute the test automatically whenever a change is made. Group testing is the process of grouping multiple tests into a single test suite. These groups are made when the tests have some form of similarity in them.
Influence of the Jest Community
The Open-source nature of Jest has created an opportunity to develop a wonderful community of tech lovers. These people are genuinely interested in the tool and are continuously contributing to its improvement and evolution. This community is present on GitHub. Among all the contributions made by this community, some of the notable ones are a plugin for Visual Studio code and multiple extensions for Jest itself. So. the importance of this community is almost impossible to neglect. The new developers should keep a continuous eye on this community to learn new features and support ideas related to Jest.
Role and Tools and Platforms in Jest Automation Testing
Tools play a vital role in improving the efficiency of automation test cases. In the current software development market, the developers have the option to choose from 1000s of alternatives available in the market. This wide variety of choices also acts as a double-sided sword. This is because the new developers can often get confused due to these choices and can end up making the wrong decision. To simplify the tool selection process there is a list of factors that the developers must consider during this phase. We can broadly classify all of these factors into general requirements and personalized requirements. The basic requirements or the general requirements will consist of the simplicity of the tool, attractive user interface and other general factors.
The personalized factor will vary depending on the developer that is using the tool or the platform. One of the major factors that you must consider in this segment is your knowledge of multiple programming languages. You also have to consider certain preferences that you would like to be present in the tool or the platform. While you’re at it, you can also verify whether the tool can fulfil the expected delivery date of your company. The last step in this process is to check whether it comes within the budget limitations set by the company standards. We can use the example of LambdaTest to shed more light on this concept:
To understand the basics, LambdaTest is a cloud platform that developers can use to ensure the cross-browser functioning of their web applications. To make it simple, cross-browser compatibility is the process of ensuring that the web application performs smoothly irrespective of the web browser or the operating system.
LambdaTest offers automated browser testing using different frameworks like Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Puppeteer etc. on secure cloud grid. Using this grid, the developers can perform the test cases on more than 3000 different web browsers and OS combinations. LambdaTest also helps the developers to implement parallel testing in Jest automation test cases. Parallel testing is a process to execute different test instances at the same interval. So, you can easily say that this process please a vital role in improving the efficiency of the test cases. Using LambdaTest, the developers can also perform delta and group testing with Jest.
The Conclusion
One of the main reasons why the developers prefer Jest is the perfect balance between simplicity of usage and the power of a great tool. This combination helps the developers to perform quick and effective prototyping during the application testing process. Jest is more useful for developers who are using JavaScript for both frontend and backend development. This is because in such a case the developers can perform both the testing operations with a single tool.
Lastly, it is almost impossible to deny the usefulness of a proper Automation Testing Framework in this modern industry. So, web application development companies should also take proper steps to improve awareness in the minds of the automation testers. Lastly, we would also like to emphasize the importance of the proper tool in the success of the testing process.
