A number of open-source test automation frameworks are available in the market today. These tools bless your projects with speed and integration. These open-source test automation frameworks help in easy script development and execution, which supports agile processes and leads to short iterations. It makes it possible for both developers and QAs to use the same kind of tools, which brings about a collaboration within the team. Another highlight of these frameworks is that it helps in matching the app platforms with test development languages, such as Java for Android, Objective C or Swift for iOS and others.
As these frameworks support the latest operating system features, it ensures that there is no platform capabilities gap around testing. These frameworks also support devices and emulators or simulators and also can be fully integrated with all the tools within IDEs. Cost is another factor that is a reason for choosing open-source test automation frameworks, which can be owned for a cost lesser than that of other testing tools that are available.
Since the open-source test automation frameworks come with minimal hardware requirements and the licensing costs are lesser along with reusable testing elements, which are highly scalable, it provides easier load management and performance testing. Based on the testing needs, testers can modify their entire cloud storage as a variety of customized pricing plans are available to suit each requirement. In fact, each of the software can be tailored to meet the testing requirement as the project progresses through each phase of development.
Apart from all these factors, the functionalities offered are interesting and exciting, unlike the regular testing tools that you might have used. We have handpicked a list of some of these open-source test automation frameworks with a variety of features to make testing easier for you.
Some of these include the following:
1.Selenium
Selenium is highly popular and one of the most preferred open-source test automation frameworks commonly used in web applications. It gives you the experience of a large number of testing tools put together, including provisions as listed below:
- Can be used to support a wide range of languages, including Java, PHP, Ruby, C#, and Python
- Highly adaptable
- Easier maintenance
- Cross-browser compatibility
- Flexible across any kind of platforms
- An extensive feature supported across a wide range of APIs and libraries, which can be further altered to meet business-specific requirements
- Testers can introduce advanced test scripts to meet any kind of complexities
- Network support
- The playback tool, Selenium IDE can be used for test authoring purpose (the tester need not be affluent in the specific scripting language for using this tool)
2.Cucumber
If you are looking for a tool that can be used for writing acceptance tests for web applications, then Cucumber, which is also a behavior-driven development tool, might be just the thing that you need. Let us take a look at the features that it supports:
- The code is reusable for tests
- For someone, who has little or no technical knowledge about testing, this is the best tool as they do not have to take the pain of reading the code, which they cannot understand (the test reports are available in plain English)
- Cross-platform support
- Easy and simple to set up the execution
- The initial implementation was in Ruby, which was later extended to Java framework
- Can be integrated with languages, such as Perl, Groovy, .NET, PHP, Python, and others
- Using code with Capybara, Selenium, and others
- Functional validation can be automated in a format that is easily readable and understandable
- The focus is mainly on the end-user experience
3.Robot Framework
One of the best generic test automation frameworks, Robot framework is a popular choice for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). The core framework has been written in Python, though it is well-supported by languages, such as Jython (JVM), PyPy and even IronPython (.NET).
Here are some of its features:
- Its tabular test data syntax is easy to use and simple to understand
- Extensibility feature, where you can implement Python and Java libraries, and also a variety of APIs to enhance the extensibility further
- Testing reports are clear and easily understandable
- Native extension available for both Python and Java, based upon your preference of the language
- A remote interface is available to support other languages as well
- The ecosystem is varied and rich and comes with a range of APIs, which consist of generic test libraries and tools that can be altered to meet specific business requirements
- Cross-platform support
- The test is simple and readable as these adopt a keyword-driven approach, and you can generate high-levels of keywords from existing ones
- It provides in-depth details of logs and integration is easier
4.Gauge
This lightweight open-source test automation tool comes with an in-built plugin architecture, which makes it easy to be used with a variety of languages, IDEs or ecosystems of your preference.
Let us skim through its features:
- Cross-platform support
- Rich syntax
- Highly flexible, simple and easy to use
- Installation and initialization can be initiated with just one command
- Support for external data sources, which lead to data-driven execution
- Extensible support to plugins (as it comes with a modular architecture)
- Cross-team collaboration is possible (the requirements can be written out in a language that would be clear to anyone as it allows to write the test cases in business language)
- These test cases can be maintained with ease and are highly understandable
- Language support for Ruby, Java, C#, and IntelliJ
- Documentation can be built in a format that you choose, which means no specific structure is needed as test specifications can be written in Markdowns
5.Watir
Based on a family of Ruby libraries, Watir is one of the strongest open-source framework tools available for web automation testing.
Here are some of the features:
- A user’s interaction with the website is mimicked
- Data-driven testing
- Easier to read and maintain tests
- Cross-browser testing support
- Regardless of the language used to develop a web app, it supports the app
- A set of various APIs are available, through which this can be extended
- Manual browsing support available in integration with Ruby
- Automation of scripts is made possible using Ruby as it a clear, precise and easily alterable scripting language
- This can be easily integrated with tools, such as Cucumber, test or unit and others
- Reading data files, connecting to databases, spreadsheets, exporting XML and structuring code is possible using reusable libraries
6.Robotium
This test automation framework makes it easy and simple to write powerful and solid automatic black-box UI testing for Android devices. Using this framework, developers can write functions, systems and even user acceptance test scenarios, which comprise of all the Android activities.
Let us take a look at the features of Robotium:
- Used to test Android apps of both native and hybrid types
- The test case can be executed with high speed
- Multi-tasking is possible – as it can easily handle Android activities automatically
- Testing can be done with no or minimal knowledge about the application
- Solid test cases can be written with ease and in lesser time
- Robustness of test cases are enhanced when compared with standardized instrumentation tests and run-time binding to UI components
- Easy to use for testing apps with the available source code and apps with implementation details that are least known
- Can be easily integrated with Ant, Maven or Gradle for running test
7.Google EarlGrey
Google’s EarlGrey is one of those native iOS UI automation frameworks that can be used to write clear, precise and easily understandable test cases.
Here are some of the interesting features of EarlGrey:
- Easy to maintain and write the test cases (as discussed above)
- Interactions are initiated on visible elements
- Repeatability and test stability is higher
- Flexibility in design
- Manual implementation of customized timing based upon the needs
- Before performing any further actions, synchronization is performed with the UI
- In-built synchronizations are available for UI, animations, network requests and others
- Customized timings can be manually implemented based on the requirements
- This works in conjunction with the XCTest framework, integrating with Xcode’s test navigator that can run directly from Xcode or command line
8.Appium
This is exclusively designed for testing mobile apps. The idea behind this is that the app need not be recompiled or modified in a way to keep it ready for testing. Don’t get your app restricted to a specific language or framework for executing these tests.
Let us go through its features:
- Cross-platform support
- Supporting simulators and emulators
- Applicable to the client-server architecture
- Reusing code across Android, Windows and iOS test suites
- The setup process is easy
- Element repositories can be created and easy to manage them with changes
9.Apache JMeter
Apache JMeter is designed for load testing and to test performance on all kinds of resources, including static and dynamic one and web dynamic apps. It puts a heavy load on server, network or can be used to test the strength or analyze and measure performance under various load types.
- Loading and performance testing a variety of apps or server or protocol types, including Web, TCP, LDAP, FTP, SOAP, shell scripts, Java objects, etc.
- Supports cross-platform
- HTML testing reports dynamic in nature and ready for presentation
- Offline analysis, replaying of test results
- 100% Java purity and complete portability
- Personalization obtained through visualization plugins and data analysis
These are some of the interesting open-source test frameworks. Try these and see how it works!
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