Does your UI automation keep up with business changes and UI iterations? In today’s rapidly changing era, thousands of apps surround the dribs and DRBS of modern life. In order to meet the user’s good experience and the freshness of the moment, these apps need to keep changing all the time, which also brings challenges to the implementation of UI automation.
1. Evolution of automated testing technology
In order to meet these challenges, automated testing technology is constantly updated and iterated. From the perspective of technology development, automated testing has gone through four generations.
Generation 1: Traditional “record – and – play” technology. This technology simulates PC operation and records the operation of keyboard and mouse. It is too dependent on the environment. As long as the user interface or function of the new version changes, the previously recorded information cannot be used, and the maintenance cost is too high.
Second generation: scripted automated testing. Use scripts for structured automated testing. Test scripts can be generated automatically by tools or developed manually by test developers. When software functionality changes, test scripts need to be updated.
Third generation: test framework. The test script is mainly abstract, modular, including data-driven and keyword driven, testers can directly use test developers encapsulated business modules. The automated scripts written also have a certain generalization. The maintenance of the project is mainly embodied in business module encapsulation or keyword abstraction.
The fourth generation: AI automated testing. On the basis of traditional automated testing technology, AI technology is introduced to solve the problems of automated testing such as high versatility, low threshold of use and low maintenance cost. At present, AI automation testing is still in its early stage, and the application of technology and methods is constantly maturing. SmartAuto intelligent UI automation test platform may represent the most advanced practical application of AI automation test.
2, UI automation core pain point
Netease Group’s business areas are extremely rich, with hundreds of App applications. Netease Etest is incubated by netease Hangzhou Research Institute. As the cornerstone of netease’s testing field, eTEST has been quietly working for 10 years to build a full-dimension quality and efficiency system and help the business take off. It can be said that it has experienced the whole process of automated testing technology evolution. For UI automation, netease Easy Test summarizes the pain points in four aspects:
High entry threshold: traditional UI automation framework requires programming foundation, and a certain grasp of the testing framework, which requires high technical ability of testers.
Difficulty in script maintenance: The technical ability of testers in the team varies, and there may be various problems such as inconsistent coding styles and non-standard codes, which makes it difficult for multiple testers to cooperate in maintenance.
Insufficient compatibility of scripts: Traditional writing methods such as ID and Xpath are greatly affected by factors such as framework, layout and model. Test scripts often need to be written in a specific way, resulting in insufficient compatibility and affecting the whole body.
The difficulty of building a professional computer room is high: the professional construction of the computer room is high, such as cabinet design, network erection, automatic operation and maintenance of equipment, etc., which put forward higher requirements for technical personnel.
3. SmartAuto- Intelligent UI automation
In the face of the four big pain points, easy to measure based on netease test practical experience accumulated over the years, based on artificial intelligence is the output of the UI test automation tools SmartAuto, and around it to provide complete mobile application testing service solution, has from the deployment of mobile equipment room to fully test the function of the mobile application and performance of full capacity. The core ability of SmartAuto is to realize intelligent control recognition through machine learning and image recognition technology, and reduce the cost of writing test scripts effectively through natural language scripting. The mobile test platform provided by Yizai combines SmartAuto tools and machine room capabilities to provide a complete set of mobile test solutions based on ARTIFICIAL intelligence, as well as exclusive cloud solutions for machine room service systems of different scales, providing stable infrastructure and rich proprietary cloud capabilities for various test scenarios. SmartAuto is perfectly combined with the computer room service to create a multi-dimensional cloud real machine testing link, covering the full life cycle of mobile application testing, and providing special performance collection and other expansion services to help deliver high availability applications, while effectively ensuring the performance and stability of applications. Its key core features are as follows:
3.1 SmartAuto core features
UI intelligent automation tool SmartAuto, with the industry’s first control recognition technology with independent learning ability, can accurately locate and identify UI elements, support dynamic content recognition, relative element positioning and other highly robust positioning identification means. Based on SmartAuto framework, test engineers write automatic scripts in natural language with zero code, which greatly improves script readability, reduces the threshold of automatic testing, and greatly saves labor and time costs.
The proprietary cloud machine room service system provided by the easy Test platform is suitable for different application scenarios such as public cloud and private cloud. It is featured by no deployment out of the box, customized development integration, high availability and light operation and maintenance. Room service is highly integrated with SmartAuto to efficiently utilize machine pools and support intelligent concurrent testing of multiple devices. In addition to supporting mainstream automation frameworks, proprietary cloud services will also provide real machine debugging, device management and various enterprise-level customization capabilities to provide efficient and stable mobile terminal testing capabilities for the platform. Full link coverage
The testability platform can not only provide core services of both functional testing and compatibility testing, but also provide basic services and extended services including reporting services, performance special collection, etc. It can cover the whole link testing process of “script writing – cloud test – View report – remote debugging” for mobile applications, which is suitable for various complex test scenarios. The test report includes defect summary of application dimension, detailed performance data and linkage test information presentation. Performance tools based on ADB or SDK can accurately obtain multi-dimensional performance parameters of mobile applications, and deeply locate various performance and stability problems.
3.2 SmartAuto core values
- Start 0 threshold, iOS/Android devices are plug-and-play, write with tune
- Natural language test cases have high readability, low writing cost, and support macro syntax to facilitate common operation abstraction and further improve the maintainability of use cases
- Use case execution is highly robust, with front-end structure changes without changing use case adaptation
- The execution set is simple to create, supports intelligent concurrency, group dependency management, and is more efficient and flexible
Netease Etest has achieved remarkable results in netease Cloud Music, netease Yanxuan, netease Pay and other applications. The efficiency of functional regression test has increased by 90%, and the revenue recall rate of UI automated online inspection has reached 85%.
Back to the original question: “Can your UI automation keep up with business changes and UI shifts?” , netease easy Test said the answer is YES. Based on netease’s 10 years of quality and efficiency experience, netease Easai team provides enterprises with overall solutions such as test management, UI automated testing, interface automated testing and performance pressure testing to help enterprises establish and improve quality and efficiency system. Welcome to try and experience netease Easai – full-dimension quality and efficiency solution