A test automation framework is a collection of best practices, popular tools, and libraries that help QA testers evaluate the functionality, security, usability, and accessibility of multiple web and mobile applications.

It enables the user to efficiently develop, run, and report automation test scripts. Typically, these frameworks combine guidelines, coding standards, concepts, processes, practices, project hierarchies, modularity, reporting mechanisms, test data injections, etc. Users benefit because they can easily follow the standards while automating the application. While there are many benefits to using test automation frameworks, some of the most valuable are ease of scripting, scalability, modularity, process definition, reusability, and low maintenance requirements. Typically, developers use one or more frameworks to maximize these benefits.

When a development team is working on different modules of the same application, it is important to avoid a mishmash of approaches. This creates confusion and increases the probability of errors. Instead, organizations should choose the ideal framework for their specific needs and apply it to each module. Other benefits of using test automation frameworks include:

1. Reusability of code
2. Maximum coverage
3. Recovery scenario
4. Low-cost maintenance
5. Minimal manual intervention
6. Easy Reporting

Selenium   

• The selenium framework is the most widely used open-source framework for test automation for web applications. Since it is compatible with multiple operating systems.

• You can write test scripts in multiple languages, which is one of the reasons why Selenium is the basis for many testing tools and automation frameworks.

• It provides extensions to emulate user interaction with browsers, a distribution server for scaling browser allocation, and the infrastructure for implementations of the WebDriver specification that permits you to write interchangeable code for all major internet browsers.

• It supports the integration of a wide range of APIs and many languages such as:

  • Java.

  • C#.

  • Python.

  • Ruby.

  • JavaScript.

  • etc……

Robot Framework

• Robot Framework is an open-source framework, so any newcomer can easily understand and does not need any high-level knowledge of testing to get started with the framework.

• This is an open-source test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development.

• It supports different test case styles like keyword-driven, behaviour-driven and data-driven for writing test cases.

• RF have community support for external libraries, tools that are open source and can be used for automation.

• In Robot Framework, Selenium Lib used for web development & UI testing.

• Anyone can easily install and helps in creating and run the test cases.

Modular

You can try this demo project found on GitHub - https://github.com/robotframework/WebDemo

[Serenity]{.ul}

• Serenity helps structure your automated acceptance tests to make them easier to understand and maintain and has great reporting capabilities along with tools like Cucumber and JUnit.

• This test results collection is providing clear and meaningful reports, that reflect not only the outcomes of your tests but also the status of the product. And stores the test results in a standardized format.

• Serenity provides libraries and templates that make it easy to write cleaner, reusable code.

• It provides compressed integration with Selenium WebDriver and RestAssured, to make both web testing and API testing easier and more efficient. and modern testing patterns such as:

  • Page Objects Model.

  • Action Classes.

  • Screenplay Pattern.

• Serenity reports designed to provide living documentation of your product.

• Facilitates writing Behavior Driven Development and Selenium tests by abstracting boilerplate code.

• Help you to test multiple scenarios at a high level while sustaining lower-level record details.

• Comes with pre-built functions, Like:

  • WebDriver management

  • Jira integration

  • running parallel processes

  • More….

Cypress IO

• When compared with others, cypress is a more developer-centric test automation framework and a new standard in front-end testing for every developer and QA engineer.

• It is a complete end-to-end testing experience that is based on Test Driven Development.

• Cypress has its Test runner which can write and run tests locally.

• Debugging tests is also easy as running tests with built-in parallelization and load balancing.

• It has next-level benefits like record test results, screenshots, and video - and view collections insights in cypress.

• Another advantage is it has real-time reload ability automatically reloads whenever you make changes to your tests.

• Unlike other frameworks, cypress has automatically waited for commands and assertions before moving on.

Webdriver-IO

• It's a next-generation web and mobile automation framework for Nodes.js

• If your team is formed of JavaScript developers and testers who are good at coding, this framework can doubtless cause you to be happy.

• It permits you to automate any application written in cutting-edge web frameworks such as:

  • React.

  • Angular.

  • Polymer.

  • Vue.js.

in addition to native mobile applications for Android and iOS.

• It comes with smart selector strategies which could, e.g. The use of  react$ command, fetch React components via its name, and clear out it by using its props or states. A comparable command called $shadow provides the capacity to fetch elements within the shadow DOM of a web component.

• It is an extendable framework that has helper functions, or more complicated sets and combinations of existing commands which is simple and useful.

• Webdriver-IO can be run on the WebDriver Protocol for actual cross-browser trying out in addition to  Chrome De-Tools Protocol for Chromium-based automation using Puppeteer.

• Another plus point is it has a huge variety of community plugins that allows you to easily integrate and extend your setup to fulfil your requirements.

Key points to think about before selecting a Test Automation Framework

When it comes to choosing a test automation framework, surely it might be a really difficult task as you have so many test automation frameworks available. It can be overwhelming to choose the one that works best for testing your application. We have to go through many considerations to choose the best framework for us. So here we will explore the initial considerations for choosing a framework.

Understanding the requirements

To choose the test automation framework that fits the project first, we should understand the business requirements of the project. There can be many business requirements but here we will share some of them which help to choose the test framework. Type of the project: web application, mobile application, or desktop application. Scope of the project: Identify the test scenarios for each feature and its dependencies. It helps to identify the foundation of tests and to spot the foremost vital areas to test. Understand the capabilities of your team whether the team is enriched with required strengths. Requirements on how it needs to be implemented and maintained.

Identify the main criteria of the project.

Under this, it needs to understand key criteria of the project such as,

• Ease of development and maintenance

  • It should be simple, easy to handle, and possible to reduce human and time resource utilization.

• Cross-platform capability

  • Supports multiple platforms, multiple languages, and multiple browsers.

• Cross-browser capability

  • Supports multiple browsers.

• Language

  • Supporting the different languages to create the custom-built scripts would be useful.

• Pricing

  • Open source or paid.

• Type of framework

  • According to the level of testing: Integration Testing, Unit Testing, Functional Testing, and Nonfunctional Testing.

Identify the pros and cons of each framework.

List down all frameworks with the key criteria’s and identify the pros and cons of each while considering the organizational and business requirements.

Analyze the results.

By considering all the above criteria’s take a decision with your team and choose the framework with Maximum coverage, Recovery scenario, Minimal manual intervention, and Easy reporting.

Getting Started

The following helpful questions to determine the best framework for your organization:

1. Consider the application and the technology involved. How was the application built? What is the user experience like?
2. Think about testing requirements. Does the application have a very complex workflow process?
3. Determine the license cost of the tool. What costs are associated with each framework?
4. Evaluate the skill sets available within your organization. What skills does your team already have?
5. Is there a team that could plug into one of the frameworks?

When evaluating multiple tools, it is useful to create a dashboard to evaluate various metrics such as ease of scripting, integration, usage and generating reports. And will help you choose the right tool for you.

Conclusion

There are so many open-source test automation frameworks and tools out there that it is impossible to list them all in one article. These 5 tools catch my eye, but keep in mind that not all tools and frameworks are created equal. The two areas that these frameworks and tools shine in are their support for different operating systems and different scripting languages.

As automation tests become more popular, new challenges and opportunities arise. For example, AI, Robotic process automation (RPA), and machine learning are expected to experience significant growth over the next few years. Therefore, it is wise to consider the benefits and risks of automation, including test automation frameworks and RPA solutions, in your company.