Through the evolution of development tools, testing tools have also evolved. They have strengthened and support the Quality Assurance process as a whole. Automation testing is one among them, and Selenium is one open-source tool that cannot be overlooked.
Automation tools are also changing at a rapid pace due to the changing times. There are plenty of automation tools out there today that you can use as a fragment of your automation process. The focus of this article is Cypress and cypress testing, a tool that is highly promising and filled with advanced features.
Cypress – where does it come from?
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Users, developers, and specialists can use Cypress to create JavaScript user tests. In addition to interacting with various test automation tools like Selenium and Protractors, it does not rely on Selenium due to the fact that drivers do not need to communicate with the browser, making it faster to test.
Web Browsers are required to use it, and it provides an end-to-end testing experience in your browser for modern web applications built with the React and AngularJS frameworks. You can monitor your automated testing results in real time.
In addition to automating end-to-end tests, it can test unit test methods, model classes, service classes, and more, no matter what our application is. Besides its Selenium WebDriver Framework, Cypress is also equipped with test execution capabilities during the testing phase due to its multiple language bindings and integrated grid architecture.
As a whole, it is designed for front-end developers who wish to write tests in JavaScript without the complex setup of Selenium. A cloud-based grid platform called Lamdatest can be used to test Cypress Test Automation Framework.
A testing framework like Cypress allows you to run tests in parallel in order to ensure optimal browser coverage, which is impossible to achieve in a local environment. In addition to testing mobile web browser functionality, Cypress can also be used to test mobile applications designed for browsers based on frameworks such as Ionic.
For traditional teams that don’t integrate development roles, Cypress would probably be a better tool than Selenium for involving developers in software testing. With Cypress, you can test various applications across Edge, Firefox, and Chrome. It is an automation tool that supports cross-browser testing.
Striking Features Of Cypress
In comparison to other popular cross-browser compatibility test automation frameworks, Cypress features the following:
- Cypress makes debugging tests a breeze.
- Cypress generates full page screenshots for each event that occurs during the test execution. Additionally, it can record video of the test execution.
- With Cypress, you don’t need to add explicit or implicit waits because automation waits and assertions are available. If you want to learn more about Selenium’s types of waits. Due to this, Cypress tests are less flaky than Selenium equivalents.
- Unlike other packages, Cypress comes with fully baked libraries and doesn’t require any additional dependencies to be installed.
- The browser session is shared by the test code and application, which results in faster response times.
- Changing the code and running only the changed test as soon as you save it is possible since the tests run within the real browser.
- An application that runs as a GUI can be seamlessly integrated with the Cypress test runner.
- Using the Cypress dashboard, you can execute parallel tests and generate detailed reports.
What makes Cypress so special?
Let us have a look at what makes Cypress so special and popular.
- Setup is easy.
Getting started with Cypress takes just three steps. Here’s how to set it up and run a test with Cypress:
- First, download Cypress
- Launch the Cypress GUI
- After this, you should be able to run the test
- Tests will no longer be flaky
Cypress is excellent at handling flakiness, especially when it comes to handling actions that are executed on web elements before they have been ready to act. We spend a lot of time smoothening the test execution process. The default timeout command is added prior to executing any command. In order to know if an element is ready to perform actions, an algorithm is used.
- A great dashboard
This is another great feature of Cypress. The dashboard provides insights and a summary of your CI/CD tests. It is similar to other CI/CD tool dashboards, which show test execution logs and execution details. Furthermore, you can also record your tests and watch them on the dashboard by default. This allows you to identify how the tests were executed in CI and find out where the failure occurred.
- The error message should be cleared
As a result, Cypress’ error messages are much more clear and understandable than other testing tools, which can lead to increased productivity as a result of less time spent on deciphering why tests fail.
- Increases the number of tests written by developers
There are several companies that encourage developers to do more code testing and to write automated tests. In order to promote a culture that ensures quality is everyone’s responsibility, Cypress plays a key role here. Additionally, it is discouraged to work in silos, where QA teams write tests in multiple repositories.
- A GUI-based tool
In addition to the GUI tool for viewing or executing tests, Cypress also offers a configuration outlook and a dashboard for viewing tests executed. Additionally, you can watch the running tests and gain a deeper understanding of them. It helps to comprehend and debug the test in a detailed manner by giving you additional insight into each step and also providing a DOM snapshot before and after the actions are performed. The GUI tool also allows you to save and re-run your test automatically after updating and saving it.
- Test beyond the UI with Cypress plugins
Below are some examples, other than functional testing, of how Cypress can be used as a UI testing tool and a plugin ecosystem.
- Unit testing: Angular, Vue, React, and other types of code can be tested using the Cypress plugins.
- Accessibility testing: It is possible to test accessibility using a plugin called cypress-axe. API testing is also available.
- Visual testing: To keep an eye on your user interface, Cypress offers plugins for the most popular visual testing tools, including Percy, AppliTools, etc.
- Documentation is excellent
A large number of different examples can also be found in the Cypress team’s GitHub repository, which also demonstrates how their documentation is clear for everyone using it. Although Cypress has some limitations, you should’t let them stop you from using the tool since the Cypress team has provided detailed workarounds for these limitations in their documentation site.
What is the role of Selenium in Cypress?
Selenium is not used by Cypress. In both cases, end-to-end tests can be run on a browser with Cypress and Selenium, but their purpose is very different: Selenium is great for running existing test suites written with another framework. Suppose you already have some Mocha or Jasmine tests; using Selenium, you can run them in a browser. It can even work with Cucumber with some effort.
In addition to giving you more power, Cypress’s own domain-specific language makes it easier to read and write new tests from scratch. In addition, it makes your tests run faster, since it generates code that runs in the browser instead of running on the test runner’s computer as a script.
Wrapping Up The Cypress Tutorial
You can easily write powerful and flexible front-end tests for your web applications with Cypress, a purely JavaScript-based framework. As well as easy test configuration, convenient reporting, and intuitive dashboards, it offers advanced testing options for both unit tests and integration tests. Unlike other frameworks that support JavaScript, Cypress is widely accepted by developers. It has also been hailed by QA engineers and developers ever since it was released to the community.
Before adopting Cypress, here are a few things you should know
- Scripting is only supported in JavaScript
- A jQuery selector is the only one supported
- Although Cypress supports cross-browser functionality on their roadmap, they currently only support Canary, Chromium, Chrome, and Electron.
- The next generation of Selenium architecture
- It does not come for free, but it does offer a basic free plan.
- Cypress makes writing tests easier and more enjoyable.
With LambdaTest, you can run Cypress parallel testing online to reduce your test cycles. This Cypress tutorial explains the basics of the Cypress test automation framework, as well as how its modern architecture resolves web automation testing problems. Our hands-on experience with Cypress tests on cloud-based grid LamdaTest was also enhanced by testing its open-source test runner and paid Dashboard services. A reliable and scalable cloud grid makes it possible to perform cross browser testing with Cypress.
