Cypress and The Rise of Automation in Software Testing

June 18, 2021

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In recent years application testing has been evolving rapidly to fit into the needs of the current market which is ridden by needing to constantly deliver quality products, as a QA tester trying to get through tickets in a high volume project (or projects) can rapidly decrease the quality of one's work. This is why automation testing was able to grab first place in one of the best solutions for speed and quality. Automation testing practices are designed to adjust to the necessities of any kind of application development and these depend highly on two factors: - **Resources:** How much money are companies willing to put into getting the correct resources to implement high-end automation practices? - **Time:** Are companies willing to invest the amount of time necessary to make sure the implementation of these practices is successful? Along with the rise of automation testing, there came a huge growth (of up to 85%) in the development of new open source software to write end to end testing. This ties in together with the opportunity of [utilizing human resources in more skilled labor.](https://www.rootstack.com/en/blog/ai-and-quality-assurance-perfect-exchange) The boom of end to end testing tools gave birth to a new state of the art testing application, Cypress. A favorite amongst the crowd, Cypress has shown to be a true contender to legacy tools like Selenium and user-friendly E2E testing application, built on Mocha and Chai, and based on a JavaScript testing framework. Here are a few key points that make Cypress one of the most popular E2E automation testing tools: - Tracking failed tests is easy since Cypress will save logs, snapshots, and videos of every ran test. - Cypress provides meaningful error messages that allow getting a better insight into why things are failing. - It differentiates itself from other testing tools because it’s built to test as a real user, meaning that it will try commands and assertions until it gets a final answer. When automating a test its important to have a clear path on the steps to follow, a good starter approach would be: - Create a solid testing strategy taking into consideration all aspects of the application and project. - Select your top use cases and go with those, its easy to want to test for everything but its more effective to test core pieces. - Develop a simple smoke test to get started with the entire testing process, this will get you acquainted to the system and allow for discovery. A key takeaway here is that automation testing is one of those things that are here to stay, it’s been tried and approved by most of the community and with the birth of tools like Cypress the future of testing automation seems exciting. To learn more about testing, automation and software development in general head over to our site! Rootstack, Web Development and Automations.