{"id":11816,"date":"2018-03-26T20:25:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T20:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.applitools.com\/?p=1816"},"modified":"2020-08-10T17:31:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T17:31:30","slug":"visual-testing-as-an-aid-to-functional-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/app14743.cloudwayssites.com\/blog\/visual-testing-as-an-aid-to-functional-testing\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual UI Testing as an Aid to Functional Testing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous blog post of mine \u201c<\/a><\/u>Embracing Agility: A Practical Approach for Software Testers<\/a><\/span>\u201d<\/a><\/u>, I discussed how an agile team changes the role of the software tester. Instead of being a gatekeeper that tests the product after it is developed, the software tester is part of the development process.<\/p>\n

I also described how the shift-left movement enables the software tester to concentrate on the more interesting<\/em> tests, and leave the boring tests (\u201cthis form field can only accept email addresses\u201d) to the software developer. But those interesting tests, at least the ones we decided to automate, need to be written, and written quickly.<\/p>\n

In this blog post I will discuss a technique whereby you can use visual UI testing to make writing those tests much easier. <\/p>\n

Visual UI Testing vs Functional Testing<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Visual tests are usually used to check the visual aspects of your application. Makes sense, no? To automate tests that verify that your application looks<\/em> OK, you write visual tests, and use visual testing tools such as Applitools Eyes<\/a><\/span>. But visual testing tools can also be used for functional tests.<\/p>\n

Really? How can visual testing help us write functional tests, tests that check how the application behaves<\/em>? First, let\u2019s understand how visual testing and functional testing of applications work.<\/p>\n

Functional Testing<\/strong><\/h4>\n

A functional test (in this blog post! I am sure that you can find other people that define it differently) is a test that starts an application in a certain state, performs a set of actions, and tests that the application is in the correct state after those actions.<\/p>\n

So a functional test looks like this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Load a specific set of application data<\/li>\n
  2. Start the application<\/li>\n
  3. Execute a set of actions on the UI (or the REST API!) of the application<\/li>\n
  4. Assert that the actual state of the application is the expected one<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Yes, you might argue that it is not the test that starts the application, and that the test should always create the specific set of data using other actions. You could, but that\u2019s bikeshedding<\/a><\/span>. True, no functional tests look exactly like this, but the idea is correct:<\/p>\n