Software Testing and Development Blog Posts

TLDR; check that you haven’t redeclared a field as a variable in a setup method

FAQ - why does my code throw a null pointer exception - common reason #1 Redeclaration

• Using @BeforeClass or @Before can setup data for use in tests
• Any ‘variables’ we instantiate need to be ‘fields’ rather than variables
• We want to instantiate them in the setup method rather than redeclare them

TLDR; Mix and match different abstraction layers and Objects to create the architecture you need to support your automated execution activities to support clarity and ease of development.

I found a postit note on my desk. I can’t remember when I drew it but it seems to have been an attempt to group different levels of abstractions used when automating, in this case automating a Web GUI.

TLDR; Use a combination of tools to offset other tools weaknesses. Insomnia makes switching HTTP proxies easier than Postman when performing exploratory testing

TLDR; I can fool myself into comfortable complacency about code when programming. I can use testing to banish this false glamor.

TLDR; Learning to use browser dev tools can help you investigate defects that have no visible output on the Web GUI, and they can help you bypass problems in the real world.

One common bug that I find a lot with web applications are errors that do not get reported to the user.

TLDR; If you are not sure that you should experiment with new techniques then find ways to monitor the domain first, you might be able to learn from someone else’s experience.

When things are stable, and they are going well, a hard question to answer is “Is it time to experiment?”.

How to improve your software testing skills, by following these strategies, that’s how. Based on a quick book recommendation - Isaac Newton by James Gleick I want to explain how we can learn lessons from his approach to his work and career.

TLDR; HttpURLConnection does not support PATCH, but we can sometimes use X-HTTP-Method-Override instead (this works with Spark Framework). I can Patch POJO using reflection, or deserialize to simple POJO and compare with null values instead

TLDR; Architecting a Web Service using Spark Framework to support more Unit testing and allow the inclusion of HTTP @Test methods in the build without deploying the application. Create API as a POJO. Start Spark in @BeforeClass, stop it in @AfterClass, make simple HTTP calls.

TLDR; Identify Oracles, automate observation of changes, understand GUI/Mobile differences, harness tool support.