The Complete Guide to Writing Stable Automated Tests with Cypress
Section I – Introduction
The increasing shift towards modern web and mobile applications built with JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue and Angular has led to unprecedented complexity in front-end code. Features like dynamic single page apps, real-time data and personalized user experiences certainly enrich applications, but also introduce volatile complexity that is hard to test manually.
The World Quality Report 2021-22 highlights that 63% of application defects originate from the front-end code, as it interfaces directly with users. Not to mention the scale of releases – teams ship code multiple times a day with little time for extensive ongoing testing.
Top brands adopt sophisticated test automation strategies to prevent regressions and catch critical defects before they impact customers. However 74% of testers cite existing tools lacking capabilities to keep pace with evolving application changes as their #1 barrier. Open-source platforms like Selenium / Webdriver power a majority of test automation today, but have significant pain points around flaky tests, complex setup and lack of reliability in modern web environments.
This guide focuses on Cypress – a next generation front end testing framework purpose-built for today‘s complex web applications. With its unique design and architecture, Cypress helps overcome many limitations developers face with existing tools.
Let‘s first understand why Cypress is growing exponentially in popularity:
Lightning Fast Test Execution
Cypress runs directly inside the browser, eliminating unnecessary network traffic and makes tests run up to 4X faster than Selenium. The entire testing interface is optimized for speed.
Automatic Waiting and Retries
Cypress automatically waits for elements and commands before moving on – no more timing issues. Assertions retry to prevent false failures.
Time Travel
Cypress captures full video + screenshots and command logs to replay tests later like a DVR. You can go back in time to see what happened with pinpoint precision.
Spies, Stubs and Clocks
Alter your application‘s functions and test conditions without modifying source code using mocks, spies and stubs.
Debuggability
The developer tools stay open as you test enabling you to debug just like debugging your application using the Console, network tab, query selector and other familiar tools.
Automatic Web Service Mocking
Out of the box support for stubbing and mocking network requests with test data. No more messy manual mocks.
Cross Platform Support
Cypress enables you to write automated tests once and run them across different operating systems without modifications.
These capabilities have fueled Cypress‘ surging popularity amongst developers and testers.
As per StackOverflow‘s 2022 survey, Cypress is now the 2nd most loved test automation framework behind Selenium with a Net Promoter Score of 68.
Let‘s now deep dive into writing Cypress tests across different testing types.
Section II – Writing End-to-End Test Cases
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