Transcripted Summary
We reviewed the technical steps to integrate visual tests within CI in chapter 9 of the beginner course on automated visual testing here on Test Automation University.
However, in this course I’d like to focus on execution considerations.
When planning your continuous integration strategy, you may be wondering how does visual testing fit in?
Many of our customers take different approaches to running their visual tests. Some companies run their visual tests on an hourly basis; some run them only on deployment builds; and some run them on every UI check-in.
One of the concerns customers had with running the visual checks frequently, was that they take longer to run than the normal functional tests. However, many are seeing this concern addressed with the Visual Grid and are therefore able to get more use out of their visual checks.
What many customers have found extremely helpful is annotating their visual tests with tags.
@Test
@Tag(“visual”)
public void testAmazon(){
eyesManager.validateWindow();
}
This feature is usually provided by your test runner tool, such as JUnit or TestNG.
By annotating your test, you can easily configure your CI builds to execute or ignore visual tests as needed.
Figure out what works best for your team's needs. I'd recommend starting out with separate builds for your visual tests. Allow these to run maybe once an hour. Evaluate these executions to see how fragile your application is, and modify the types of match levels or checkpoints that you're using throughout your tests if you need to.
Once you're confident with your tests, then consider tying them to your main CI builds.
Okay, that concludes the Advanced Automated Visual Testing course. Hopefully you've picked up a few more tips beyond what you learned in the Beginner Automated Visual Testing course.
Should you have any questions or want to learn more about any of the features, visit applitools.com where there is thorough documentation to guide you.
Take care.
