Experience the power of Magento Automation Testing - part 1.

E-commerce Automation testing scope

Automation testing in e-commerce involves using automated software tools and scripts to test websites and applications.

Its primary goal is to ensure the quality, reliability, and performance of online shopping platforms. Common types of automation testing used in e-commerce include:

Functional Tests: This involves automating test cases to verify that the core functions of the e-commerce website, such as product search, add to cart, checkout, and payment processing, work as intended.

Regression Testing: Automation is used to run a suite of test cases to check whether new code changes have introduced any unintended side effects or regressions in existing functionality.

Load Testing: Automated load testing tools simulate heavy user traffic to assess how the e-commerce platform performs under peak loads. This helps identify performance bottlenecks and scalability issues especially before high season Magento eCommerce Performance for Black Friday

Performance Testing: Automated performance testing checks the speed and responsiveness of the website or application. It helps ensure that web pages load quickly, especially product pages and the checkout process.

Compatibility Testing: Automation tests are executed on various browsers, operating systems, and devices to ensure the e-commerce platform functions consistently across different environments.

Security Testing: Automated security testing tools can identify vulnerabilities and security issues, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and data breaches, to protect sensitive customer data.

Usability Testing: Automation can assist in evaluating the user interface (UI) and overall user experience of the e-commerce platform. It checks for user-friendly navigation, accessibility, and mobile responsiveness.

Cross-device Testing: Automated testing helps verify that the e-commerce website works correctly on different devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops.

Data Integrity Testing: Automation ensures that customer data is handled securely and accurately during transactions, including order processing and payment validation.

API Testing: E-commerce platforms often rely on APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for various functions, such as payment gateways and inventory management. Automated tests can check the integration and functionality of these APIs.

Order Processing Testing: Automation can simulate the end-to-end order fulfillment process, from order creation to shipping and delivery, to ensure orders are processed correctly and timely.

Inventory Management Testing: Automated testing can help verify the accuracy of inventory levels and the synchronization of stock information across the platform.

Checkout Process Testing: Ensuring that the checkout process is smooth, error-free, and secure is crucial. Automation tests can cover scenarios involving payment processing, shipping options, and order confirmation.

Magento automation testing

Automated testing in Magento uses specialized tools and scripts to test e-commerce websites built on the Magento platform. The tests can also be applied to Magento automation testing and can be customized for open-source code.

Magento, as an open-source platform, is customized to meet unique business needs. With the constant code changes, automation testing plays a crucial role.

Automation and manual testing

Manual testing means that testers interact with the application by entering data, making clicks and evaluating results. It is suitable for testing functionality, usability, user experience and other features that automation testing can’t cover or is not ready to cover.

Manual tests are also used to validate automated ones as these scripts have a tendency of passing when test cases fail. Therefore it is important to include manual tests in the process too.

Two Testing Approaches

• Manual Testing: In manual testing, human testers directly interact with the Magento website or application using browsers and devices. They perform test scenarios, validate functionality, and manually report issues. Testers execute test cases step by step and document their findings.
• Automation Testing: Automation testing uses tools and scripts to execute test cases. Testers write scripts to simulate user interactions and verify Magento site behavior. These scripts can be automatically run, and the results are reported without manual intervention.

Execution Speed in favoor of autmoation testing

• Manual Testing: Manual testing is time-consuming because it relies on human testers to perform test cases manually. The speed of execution depends on the testers' skills and efficiency.
• Automation Testing: Automation testing is significantly faster. Test scripts can be executed quickly and repeatedly, making it ideal for performing regression tests and running large test suites efficiently.

Repetitiveness as an advantage of automated tests

• Manual Testing: Manual testing is prone to errors and inconsistencies, especially when executing repetitive test cases. Testers may become fatigued, leading to variability in test results.
• Automation Testing: Automation testing is highly repetitive and consistent. Test scripts execute the same actions and verifications each time, ensuring reliable and consistent results.

Scalability enhanced with automated tests

• Manual Testing: Manual testing may become impractical and time-consuming as the size and complexity of the Magento site grow. It is challenging to scale manual testing for large e-commerce platforms.
• Automation Testing: Automation is highly scalable. New test scripts can be added to cover additional test cases, and existing scripts can be reused, making it suitable for large and complex Magento sites.

Flow for Regression Testing

• Manual Testing: Regression testing can be tedious and time-consuming in a manual testing approach, as testers must repeatedly run the same test cases.
• Automation Testing: Automation is well-suited for regression testing. Automated test suites can be quickly rerun to identify any regressions in existing functionality after code changes.

Cost and Resources optimisation

• Manual Testing: Manual testing typically requires a team of skilled testers and significant human resources. It can be costly and time-consuming, especially for continuous and repetitive testing.
• Automation Testing: While there is an initial investment in setting up automation, it can reduce long-term testing costs by requiring fewer testers and providing faster, more efficient testing processes.

Vulnerability to human error in functional tests

• Manual Testing: Manual testing is susceptible to human errors, oversight, and subjectivity. Testers may overlook certain issues or make mistakes in documenting test results.
• Automation Testing: Automation testing is less prone to human errors. Once the scripts are written correctly, they execute tests consistently and provide accurate results.

In everyday practice, Magento testing typically employs a combination of manual and automation testing. Manual testing is useful for exploratory, usability, and ad-hoc testing that requires human judgment and creativity.

Automation testing is ideal for repetitive, routine, and regression testing, ensuring efficient and reliable testing of critical e-commerce functionalities.

The choice between manual and automation testing depends on testing goals, resources, and e-commerce project maturity.

New Manual testing approach

By automating mundane tasks, manual testers can swiftly engage in the development process, validating and refining documentation from a testing perspective.

This proactive approach not only enhances the value of code and applications, but also allows for the early detection and elimination of defects.

Consequently, it prevents the multiplication of bugs while benefiting from the broader perspective and valuable insights that manual testers bring to the table. Thus, facilitating an improved development process.

Automation testing tools

When it comes to automation testing for Magento, you can use a variety of testing tools and frameworks to ensure the quality and reliability of your online store. Here are some of the common automation testing tools and frameworks used for Magento:

Selenium

Selenium is a widely-used open-source tool for automating web browsers. You can use Selenium with various programming languages such as Java, Python, and C++ to automate testing of Magento websites.

PHPUni

PHPUnit is a unit-testing framework for PHP. It's often used for testing individual units of code in Magento extensions and customizations.

Behat

Behat is a behavior-driven development (BDD) framework for PHP. It allows you to describe how your Magento application should behave using human-readable sentences. Behat can be used to create tests for different scenarios and functionalities.

Codeception

Codeception is a PHP testing framework that provides support for both unit and functional testing. It can be used to write tests for Magento, including acceptance tests that simulate user interactions.

MageSpec

MageSpec is a Ruby-based testing framework specifically designed for Magento. It follows a BDD approach and allows you to write behavior-driven tests for Magento extensions.

Magento Testing Framework (MTF)

MTF is an official testing framework provided by Magento for testing Magento 2 stores. Magento testing framework includes various testing types like unit, integration, functional, and performance testing.

Utilising the Magento Functional Testing Framework (MFTF), developers can write and conduct a range of tests, from functional and integration tests to code quality and product quality tests. These tests are instrumental in verifying code quality and promote seamless browser integration.

The tools mentioned below enable test automation, allowing for the initiation of tests following specific actions like deployment.

Jenkins

Jenkins is a popular continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tool. You can use it to automate the execution of your Magento test suites, ensuring that tests are run consistently after code changes.

Travis CI

Travis CI is a cloud-based CI/CD service that integrates well with GitHub repositories. You can set up automated testing for your Magento projects using Travis CI.

CircleCI

Similar to Travis CI, CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD service that supports automated testing for Magento. It can be integrated with your GitHub repository for seamless automation.

GitLab CI/CD

If you're hosting your Magento code in GitLab, you can utilize GitLab CI/CD to automate testing as part of your development pipeline.

Playwright

It's cross-platform, allowing testing on Windows, Linux, and macOS, locally or on CI, in headless or headed mode. Playwright is also cross-language, supporting TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, .NET, and Java.

Cypress

Cypress, a robust testing framework for web applications, effectively validates the frontend of Magento stores.

• user-friendly interface,
• real-time various browser preview,
• fast and reliable component testing,
• instant visual feedback.

When selecting an automation testing tool for Magento, it is crucial to take into account various factors, such as the specific type of testing required (unit, integration, functional, performance), the expertise of your team, and the unique requirements of your e-commerce site.

Conclusion on Magento Automation testing

Magento Automated Testing is a crucial aspect of maintaining product quality and ensuring the consistent functionality of a platform.

• Testing frameworks and strategies are pivotal in product and code quality monitoring, as they provide an insight into code complexity and facilitate the assessment of javascript modules through a static analysis tool.
• System integrators and extension developers can leverage the information gleaned from these tests to modify existing behaviour, paving the way for continuous improvement.
• The application of MFTF tests and other automated tests greatly enhance the efficiency of the testing process, offering instant feedback and automatic bug detection before they affect the business goals.
• This is particularly beneficial when dealing with legacy code or when making changes to previously released products.
• Developers are also able to run browser testing scenarios to ensure compatibility and functionality across different platforms.

Despite the potential learning curve associated with understanding the various testing strategies and the use of the tools mentioned above, the benefits of incorporating automated tests into a development workflow are undeniable.

Not only do they aid in the detection and rectification of errors such as undefined methods, coding standard violations, and incorrect dependencies, but they also provide a means of managing code complexity.

By focusing on continuous integration and making use of tools that enable server-side testing, system behaviour analysis, file system exploration, and source code review, developers can enhance both the functionality and quality of their Magento products.

This leads to an overall improvement in the User Experience and the Performance of the application improving e-commerce business ROI.

Check the Magento Black Friday Testing Case Study to learn more on Application Performance Testing.

Magento Automated Tests - Part 2.