August 2020 Content Summary

TLDR; August content contains links to updated practice applications, and new videos.

The content on Patreon is accessible for only $1 a month at patreon.com/eviltester. Supporters gain access to downloadable PDFs of the content and micro courses e.g. How I Test - Web App, Test Ability Audit and more

API Challenges

API Challenges has been updated to include a few new challenges and to make the ‘Challenge’ page look better. And the challenges have been ordered to make more sense.

I’ve recorded all the ‘how to’ videos for the challenges and these will be released gradually as I edit them and have them transcribed for captioning.

The Challenges are an ‘instantiation’ of The Thingifier - a generic API and Entity Relationship tool - this has had some bug fixes so if you use the more complicated API on the releases page it should function better.

• release
• Todo Manager REST API

Automated Execution Examples

The Thingifier and Challenger is filled with Automated Execution examples.

• Using REST Assured
  • https://github.com/eviltester/thingifier/tree/master/challengerAuto
• Using HTTP Client
  • https://github.com/eviltester/thingifier/tree/master/challenger/src/test/java/uk/co/compendiumdev/challenger
• Tactical usage of REST Assured
  • https://github.com/eviltester/thingifier/tree/master/todoManagerRestAuto

And the Challenger and Thingifier have a lot of Unit tests if you want to see some JUNit 5 examples.

I also have some JUnit 4 and 5 examples in:

• junit examples

Twitter Summary for August 2020

This summary is pulled from reports generated by Chatterscan.com (A free Twitter Client)

I filter by user @eviltester, show retweets, and replies. Then look in the page source to find the markdown to copy and paste.

I haven’t been very active on Twitter over the last month.

I did find this tweet interesting:

• Kieran HJ Connell @khconnell tweeted “Amazing work! Stardotter Mark Moxon has fully documented the original BBC Micro Elite source code. Everything you ever wanted to know about how this legendary game was constructed. Read all about it here:”
  • https://github.com/markmoxon/elite-beebasm

I didn’t do much 8-bit assembly coding. Although I did, for my own amusement, write a small sprite based tank shooter for the gameboy in Z80 - code has fortunately been lost during various floppy disks clearances.

I preferred 68000, but I found reading the annotated Elite code interesting.

Decompiling and Disassembling applications is a rare requirement now. I did once work on a project where we had to decompile a clipper database application to reverse engineer a specification to allow a new project to re-create the app.

Most of the decompiling I have done in the past few years was looking at an android apps in more detail.

Reverse engineering skills are useful though. Testers do build up those skills:

• when testing, by creating models of applications as we learn more about them, to guide our future testing.
• when automating to look at HTML to identify locators and synchronisation strategies.

And if you really want to push your reverse engineering skills then learning to automate in the console often requires you to read through the JavaScript of the application to find entry points.

And I show an example of doing that in one of August’s blog posts.

• Automating Calculator From Console

Blog Posts For August 2020

• July 2020 EvilTester.com and Patreon Content Summary

  • Content created and collated for EvilTester.com, Patreon and Social for July 2020

• Unit Testing FAQs and Lessons Learned

  • Some notes on lessons I’ve learned or adopted when Unit Testing and working with TDD.

• Episode 014 - How to Recruit Testers - The Evil Tester Show

  • In this podcast we share tips on how to recruit

• Automating Calculator From Console

  • Given an example calculator application how could I automate it from the JavaScript console?

• REST API Open Source Workshops

• Episode 015 - Exploratory Testing Government Guidance - The Evil Tester Show

  • In this podcast we discuss a UK Government document on exploratory testing.

Patreon Posts For August 2020

• Consistency Bugs

  • Consistency might bug you, it might suggest a bug, and it might lead to ‘bugs’ later.

• Business Decisions, Quality and Advocacy

  • Decisions are made which will go against my view of the situation. How should I handle that? How hard should I advocate?

• Authorization vs Authentication vs Bearer Token Oauth 2

  • A few interesting things I found adding the Bearer Token challenge to the ApI Challenges.

• When test environments don’t match production

  • Some lessons learned when Test environments do not match Production.

• Http Libraries

  • A project with http library examples and code for http client and url connection with some pros and cons.

• Books on Trial - the sorting

  • ‘Recently I had to sort out my books again… ‘Do you need this book? Are you sure that you will read it again?’

• Presenting Enthusiasm

  • Presenting an enthusiastic front, while creating a buffer for potential disappointment in interviews can be hard.

• API Workshop Material

  • The pdfs for my API Workshop material that I released to github.

• Reasons for avoiding unit test coverage

  • Unit testing can be hard, when we have to mock dependencies. Often this is because we haven’t split the domains well. Some examples.

• Checking Results for Canvas App

  • I would like an internal object to be public. But we can see the difference between ‘automating’, ’testing’ and ‘assertion checking’

• Code Coverage, Bug Detection and Roles

  • Code coverage could find some bugs in ApiChallenges, State coverage is also required. External function coverage: testing was a side-effect.

• Automating exam results - evaluating the pre-report

  • Part of the testing role is to point out issues, during the early decision making process, as well as ‘after’ the build.

• Automating Canvas Based Calculator

  • Steps and process I went through to investigate and experiment how to automate a calculator app from the console.

• BrowserStack QnA - Edited

  • Browserstack conf talk QnA segment edited and enhanced.

• Testers and Programmers working together on Unit Tests

  • How can testers add value in the Unit Testing process? Here are some initial tips.

• Risk Management - model vs presentation

  • Some notes on risk management, and modelling your model prior to formalising your model for presentation and reporting.

• Unit Testing for Test Automation

  • Some expanded notes on my Unit Testing blog post - concentrating on Unit Testing for Test Automation, and using Unit Tests to learn the app.

• Unit Tests Keep Code Alive

  • Code reviews are essential to check code because sometimes our (my) Unit Tests are aritificially keeping code alive.

• Testers and Testing Involvement in Detection

  • Detection goes far beyond Testing and Testers, but often we find ourselves and our actions as the prime detectors of issues on projects.

• Using risk to build a ’test’ approach

  • Questions aimed at understanding risk, mitigation and detection, can help guide a test approach.

• It works, but I don’t trust my coverage

  • It is possible to force features on top of an existing design, but that leads to risk. Refactor to gain more confidence from coverage

• Reporting and investigating are time bound activities

  • Specific time, version, environment. And use multiple tools for multiple views.

• July 2020 Collated PDFs

  • Monthly Summary PDFs for July 2020

• Content Summary for July 2020

  • List of Twitter, Patreon and Blog posts for July

You can gain access to the content on Patreon for only $1 a month at patreon.com/eviltester. Supporters gain access to downloadable PDFs of the content and micro courses e.g. How I Test - Web App, Test Ability Audit and more