Automated Functional Testing & Why It’s Crucial To Modern QA

Quality assurance (QA) teams have traditionally relied on manual smoke and regression tests for functional testing. However, as the demand for rapid and reliable software releases grows, so does the need for automated functional testing. Implementing automated functional testing helps teams remain competitive and align with modern continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. 

For many teams, beginning with automated functional testing is an effective way to incorporate automation into their QA processes.

Let’s explore how automated functional testing can enhance your development process and deliver a huge return on investment (ROI). 

What Is Automated Functional Testing? 

Functional testing is used to examine a mobile or web app’s functionality. It validates these applications against predefined requirements or specifications. This helps ensure they perform according to developers’ and end-users’ expectations.

While effective, manual functional testing can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Therefore, automated functional testing is often prioritized. It uses automated tools and pre-defined test scripts to simulate user interactions with the apps’ functions. 

Automated testing tools execute these scripts automatically, comparing actual outcomes with expected results.

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Automated Functional Testing Example

A great example of automated functional testing is testing an e-commerce platform. In manual testing, you might repeatedly add items to the cart, enter shipping details, and confirm payment to ensure everything works correctly.

Automated testing can cover these repetitive tests, starting the test from searching for products, managing the shopping carts, and completing the checkout process. 

Let’s see how automated testing works for testing different functionalities.

Testing the Search Functionality

For the search functionality, automated tests would simulate searching for different products (like “red sneakers”) and verifying that relevant items are displayed correctly. This includes checking how the application handles variations like synonyms “red trainers” or alternative spellings “red athletic shoes.” This helps ensure all relevant products appear in search results without manual intervention.

Testing the Shopping Cart Functionality 

Testing the shopping cart functionality would involve automated scripts adding items to the cart, adjusting quantities, and removing items to ensure these actions are processed correctly. The tests would validate that the cart updates prices and totals accurately based on quantity changes, ensuring a seamless shopping experience.

Testing the Checkout Process

Automated tests for the checkout process would simulate selecting different payment methods (credit card, PayPal, etc.), entering shipping details, and verifying that all required fields are validated properly. 

This includes testing error handling scenarios, such as entering invalid payment information or skipping required fields, to ensure users receive clear instructions to correct mistakes.

The script runs automatically, verifying that each step performs as expected without requiring manual intervention. This guarantees frictionless navigation through the purchasing process whenever customers visit your site.

Why Automated Functional Testing Is Critical

The bottom line is if your software doesn’t work, you can’t sell it. Unfortunately, many companies rush apps to market without thorough testing. In 2022, poor-quality software costed businesses nearly 2.41 trillion in the USA alone. The consequences of software that doesn’t perform as promised can be severe.

• Customer Churn – With numerous options available, consumers will likely switch to a competitor’s software that functions as expected, even if it costs more.
• Revenue Loss – Losing customers and undetected payment issues in software can impact revenue, leading to months of providing the software for free. 
• Reputation Damage – Negative reviews about a malfunctioning app can severely harm your reputation, leading to lower ratings, reduced downloads, and decreased visibility.

This is why automated functional testing is important. Unlike manual testing, automated functional testing provides an efficient and reliable solution. Automated tools and scripts verify the software functions correctly and catch issues early.

Automated functional testing offers significant benefits in software testing, some of which include: 

• Saves Time and Resources: Automated functional testing streamlines the testing process, reducing the time and resources required compared to manual testing. It allows QA teams to execute tests efficiently and focus on more important tasks.

• Consistency Across Test Cycles: Automated tests ensure consistent execution of test cases across multiple cycles. This consistency helps identify regressions and ensure that new features or updates do not adversely affect existing functionalities.

• Increases Test Coverage: Automated functional testing can cover more diverse test scenarios and use cases than manual testing alone. It enables thorough testing of all functionalities, reducing the likelihood of undiscovered bugs.

• Easy Integration Testing: Automated tests facilitate seamless integration testing by simulating interactions between different software components. This ensures that integrated modules work together smoothly and reliably.

• Reduced Bugs: Automated functional testing detects bugs early in the development cycle when they are less costly and time-consuming. This approach minimizes the number of bugs that reach production, enhancing software reliability.

• High ROI: Automated functional testing offers a high ROI by saving time, reducing manual effort, and catching bugs early. It improves software quality, reduces post-release issues, and improves customer satisfaction.

Automated Functional Test Cases

A functional test case is a set of instructions for testing a specific function in a software application. For instance, If an application has a message-sending feature, a functional test case would include verifying that the message is sent when a user clicks the send button. 

In this section, we will look at various functional testing that can be automated and how to write an automated functional test case. 

Functional Testing Types

Below is a list of some functional testing types that can be automated.

• Regression testing ensures that new code changes, features, or bug fixes do not negatively affect existing functionality. It involves re-running previously completed tests on the modified software to verify that existing features still work as intended. 

• Smoke testing is a preliminary test to check the software’s basic functionality. It is a quick assessment to ensure the application’s major features work and that the software build is stable enough for further testing.

• Unit testing focuses on individual software components or modules. It verifies that each unit of code performs as expected. Developers typically write and run unit tests to ensure each code works correctly in isolation.

• Integration testing examines how different software modules or components interact. It evaluates their compatibility, communication, and data flow between them. 

• End-to-end (E2E) testing evaluates the entire application workflow from start to finish. It tests the complete software system in a real-world scenario to ensure that all integrated components function together as expected.

• Sanity testing is a subset of regression testing that verifies specific functionalities after minor changes or bug fixes. It ensures the changes or fixes work correctly without conducting a thorough regression test.

How to Write an Automated Functional Test Case

Creating an automated test case requires a different approach than a manual one. Humans design manual test cases for humans, often including titles and descriptions to maintain order during test execution. Automated test cases follow a set of best practices to ensure they run smoothly and effectively.

Here are the essential components to consider when writing automated test cases. 

• Preconditions: Specify the initial conditions or state of the application required to start the test. This might include details like the browser used, the need to log in, or navigating to a specific application part.

• Test steps: Detail the actions needed to achieve the desired state in the application and any necessary test data.

• Synchronization: Previously, tests required explicit wait times to ensure the application had enough time to perform actions before proceeding. Modern tools have improved this by reacting to the application’s actual state and proceeding when specific elements appear.

• Comments: Use comments to explain the test approach, making it easier for others to understand and follow the test logic.

• Debugging information: Include logging and warnings to help identify and resolve issues during test execution. Detailed debugging information can significantly aid developers in troubleshooting.

• Output Reporting: Report the results of each test case clearly. For instance, in negative tests, you might include messages like “test failed successfully” to indicate expected failures.

Example of Creating a Test Case of Automated Test

The following example illustrates the process of creating an automated test case for testing the login functionality of a web application. 

Test scenario: Test the login functionality with valid user credentials.

Test objective: To ensure a user can log in using valid credentials and is redirected to the dashboard page. 

Environment: Latest version of Google Chrome.

Preconditions

• The web application URL is accessible.
• The test user account has the following credentials: username “testuser” and password “password123”.

Test Steps

• Step 1: Open the web browser and go to the login page of the application.
• Step 2: Enter the username “testuser” in the username field.
• Step 3: Enter the password “password123” in the password field.
• Step 4: Click the ‘Login’ button.
• Step 5: Verify that the user is redirected to the dashboard page.

Expected/intended results: Once login credentials are added, the web page redirects to the dashboard page. 

Actual results: As Expected

Test status: Pass/Fail: Pass

Automated Functional Testing Tools

QA teams can use automated functional testing tools to test apps’ functionality according to predefined requirements. Different tools are available to automate the process. 

Some of them are given below:

1. Selenium

Selenium is a versatile suite of open-source libraries designed primarily for automating web application testing. It offers powerful capabilities and supports various browsers, operating systems (OS), and programming languages. 

Selenium WebDriver allows test engineers to configure and control browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari directly without intermediary servers. This direct interaction enhances test execution speed and efficiency.

Selenium offers a browser extension named Selenium IDE for bug reproduction scripts or simple automation-aided exploratory testing. It also offers Selenium Grid to scale and distribute tests across multiple machines and manage various test environments centrally. 

2. Sauce Labs

Sauce Labs offers comprehensive website and mobile testing solutions at every development stage, allowing you to test on thousands of different devices, browsers, and OS configurations from anywhere at any time. 

Its platform supports developing, testing, and delivering high-quality web and mobile apps at an enterprise scale. It also provides deep insights into test results, helping you pinpoint errors and fix issues quickly.

Sauce’s cross-browser feature ensures that applications are functional on every browser and OS combination. Its low-code nature simplifies test case creation and execution with AI-driven SaaS testing. It also ensures applications are visually appealing and function correctly.

3. Cypress

Cypress is a modern, open-source testing tool designed to simplify writing and running automated tests for web applications. Its easy setup requires no servers, drivers, or additional dependencies, enabling developers to quickly write their first passing test. 

It also integrates with various CI/CD tools, including GitLab CI, Travis CI, Jenkins, etc. Since Cypress runs directly in the browser, you can debug failed tests using familiar in-browser developer tools.

With Cypress Cloud, developers can optimize test runs with test parallelization, load balancing, and spec prioritization for faster feedback loops. It also offers features like Test Replay that allow you to visually inspect the DOM, network events, and console logs. 

4. Appium

Appium is an open-source mobile automation tool that enables the automation of different types of mobile applications, such as native, web (WAP), and hybrid applications. 

It supports user interface (UI) automation across numerous app platforms, including mobile, browser, desktop, TV (Roku, tvOS, Android TV, Samsung), and more. Appium allows running tests across mobile, mobile web, and hybrid applications using multiple programming languages. 

It is most effective when used with the Appium Inspector, a graphical user interface (GUI) tool for locating selectors in mobile applications. Although Appium uses Java, it supports execution from any WebDriver-supported language.

5. WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO is a next-generation browser and mobile automation test framework for Node.js designed to facilitate testing in real-world environments. It allows you to test on actual browsers or mobile devices used by your users. This ensures your applications perform correctly in the environments where they will be used.

WebdriverIO is versatile and feature-rich. It supports full E2E, unit, and component testing directly in the browser. One of its key features is that it can automatically wait for elements to appear before interacting with them. 

Built on web standards, WebdriverIO offers cross-browser support through automation via WebDriver and WebDriver BiDi. It also has native mobile support, enabling tests to be run on real mobile devices, smart TVs, or other internet of things (IoT) devices through integration with Appium.

Best Practices For Automated Functional Testing

Automating functional testing is straightforward; it involves automating repetitive tests and comparing the results with your testing goals. However, several best practices can ensure effective and efficient testing. 

Some of these include:

1. Define Clear Test Objectives

Clearly outline what you want to achieve with your automated tests. For instance, verifying a specific feature or ensuring overall application stability. Having well-defined objectives will guide your testing efforts and help you measure success. 

2. Identify Suitable Test Cases

When selecting test cases for automation, prioritize those that will deliver good ROI in the longer run. After all, not all test cases are ideal for automation. Tests that should be automated include regression, smoke, and sanity tests. 

Such tests are repetitive and time-consuming and would benefit the most from automation. Also, choose those that need to be run frequently and require significant manual effort. 

3. Rigorous Planning of Test Case Execution

Test execution enables testing specific app workflows, essential in functional testing.

Plan the execution of your test cases rigorously to ensure the test case covers all functionality.

Determine the order in which tests should run, consider dependencies between tests, and schedule tests to run at optimal times. Good planning ensures efficient and effective test execution.

4. Write Reusable Test Cases

Write test cases that can be reused across different parts of the applications or in different testing scenarios. Reusable test cases save time and effort, making your testing process more efficient. 

5. Select the Right Automation Tools

Choose automation tools that best fit your project’s needs. Consider factors such as the types of applications you are testing (web, mobile, desktop), the programming languages you use, and your team’s skill set. 

Tools like Selenium, Cypress, and Appium each have their strengths and can be selected based on your specific requirements.

6. Document Test Cases & Results

Proper documentation helps maintain clarity, transparency, and explainability. Document your test cases, steps, expected outcomes, and results. Well-documented tests help understand test coverage, identify issues, and facilitate communication within the team.

A good documenting strategy may include adding logs, screenshots, and test statuses. This also helps debug failing test cases. 

Conclusion

As your application grows more complex with new features, relying solely on manual testing becomes increasingly impractical, error-prone, time-consuming, and inefficient. Integrating automated functional testing at key stages of your development process ensures your application meets its intended requirements and functions smoothly. 

While technology evolves, our primary aim remains to deliver outstanding software. Leveraging automation can accelerate development cycles, minimize human errors, and maintain software quality. 

For those seeking a reliable testing partner, Testlio offers a comprehensive suite of services to match your product vision with user experience. Our services include:

• A comprehensive suite of functional QA testing services.
• Integrated SaaS software testing platform for holistic testing needs.
• Expertise in smoke testing, scripted testing, and exploratory testing.
• Flexible staffing options: fully managed, co-managed, on-demand, part-time, or full-time QA and QE freelancers.
• Testlio API and pre-built integrations for seamless test management, CI/CD, automated testing, and issue management