
## Cypress is cool
I like [cypress](https://www.cypress.io/) for automation - everybody does, right? It makes setting up things so smooth and implementing tests so frictionless, as if one has almost nothing to care about. I have made some experiments (and still do) with it in my GitHub repo [cypress-baby-steps](https://github.com/simonberner/cypress-baby-steps) and also wrote a few lines about it in my [last blog post](https://simonberner.rocks/2020/05/01/A-Little-Bit-of-Cypress/). But what about [Selenium](https://www.selenium.dev/)? Note: this isn't another post on Cypress vs. Selenium, no, keep reading on. 😉

## Selenium sucks?
I also like Selenium. But the need there that one has to manually check and download the browser driver (binary artifact) for each type of browser separately, all the time, is just a real pain in the neck. 😩 
The Selenium WebDriver API communicates with the specific browser-driver, which then natively drives the actual browser.

![Selenium WebDriver](assets/posts/200708/selenium-webdriver.webp)

([image source](https://bonigarcia.github.io/selenium-jupiter/#local-browsers))
 
In order to locate these drivers, the absolute path of such a binary file has to/should be exported in a given environment variable (at least in Java) before creating a WebDriver instance:

![WebDriver Path](assets/posts/200708/selenium-driverpath.webp)


Recently I asked myself: Isn’t there a better way of handling all these browser drivers? Automagically, without making my hands dirty? Good news, there is one!

## The next generation of JUnit
JUnit is a unit testing framework for Java and was initially released in 2002 by [Kent Beck](https://twitter.com/KentBeck) and [Erich Gamma](https://twitter.com/ErichGamma). Did you know that it actually originated from [sUnit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUnit)?
In 2017, another ground-braking milestone of JUnit was reached: JUnit 5 was released. I work now since 2 years with [JUnit5](https://junit.org/junit5/) and I really like it. But why do I mention this here? 

## Less Driver Management = Selenium is cool (too)
Well, as I was searching for a Selenium JUnit 5 extension to get around the pain of organising the drivers by myself, I finally found [Selenium-Jupiter](https://github.com/bonigarcia/selenium-jupiter/) 🥳 Once you include this dependency in your project, you simply need to specify the flavour of the browser driver you want to use in a test method and that’s it! No pain and (almost) no problems anymore 😅

![Selenium-Jupiter local](assets/posts/200708/selenium-jupiterlocal.webp)

The whole management of the WebDriver binaries is handled by the [WebDriverManager](https://github.com/bonigarcia/webdrivermanager) which is used by Selenium-Jupiter.
One can also control [remote browsers](https://github.com/bonigarcia/selenium-jupiter/#remote-browsers) or [docker browsers](https://github.com/bonigarcia/selenium-jupiter/#docker-browsers) with Selenium-Jupiter.

### But how does this actually work?
Selenium-Jupiter uses the dependency-injection extension model of JUnit 5 to inject the WebDriver objects into an annotated (``@Test``) Test-Method. Further more, it does the following:

1. It checks the version of the browser installed in your machine (e.g. Chrome, Firefox).
2. It checks the version of the driver (e.g. chromedriver, geckodriver). If unknown, it uses the latest version of the driver.
3. It downloads the WebDriver binary if it is not present on the WebDriverManager cache (~/.m2/repository/webdriver by default).
4. It exports the proper WebDriver Java environment variables required by Selenium (not done when using WebDriverManager from the CLI or as a Server).

([source](https://github.com/bonigarcia/webdrivermanager#basic-usage))

Thanks [Boni García](https://twitter.com/boni_gg) for creating and maintaining Selenium-Jupiter! A nice solution to avoid managing the painful boring stuff. It is a joy using it! 🙃

> _All in all, using Selenium with Java was never super easy before. But using it with JUnit 5 in combination with Selenium-Jupiter, is actually pretty cool!_

## Interesting readings about the [_vs._](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/versus-vs-verses)
- [Cypress.io vs. Selenium Test Automation](https://testguild.com/cypress-io-vs-selenium-test-automation/)
- [Puppeteer, Selenium, Playwright or Cypress?](https://www.testim.io/blog/puppeteer-selenium-playwright-cypress-how-to-choose/)
- [Cypress vs. Selenium WebDriver: Better or just different?](https://applitools.com/blog/cypress-vs-selenium-webdriver-better-or-just-different/)
- [Selenium vs. Cypress: Is WebDriver on its way out?](https://dzone.com/articles/selenium-vs-cypress-is-webdriver-on-its-way-out)
- [Cypress vs. Selenium, is this the end of an era?](https://automationrhapsody.com/cypress-vs-selenium-end-era/)

I think at the end of the day, it is not about which one is the better tool and which one you should never use again. Both of them are great and have its strength and flexibility for automation. In your project context, you and your team has to choose which one suites your needs best.

Thanks for reading
Stay safe and happy! 💃🏽


Driverless Automation With Selenium


## Intro
[Cypress](https://www.cypress.io/) is currently the Test Automation solution per se in the JavaScript web world. The hype is ongoing and seems to be unbroken and unchallengeable. I heard lots of stuff about it but actually have never used it so far. Then one day I stumbled over Marie Drake’s blog post about [Modern Web testing with Cypress](https://www.mariedrake.com/post/modern-web-testing-with-cypress) and that gave me the kick to give it a try myself. Has testing really evolved with cypress the same as the web did in the recent years? Is cypress really that simple to set up and work with?
Well let’s see!

## Let’s begin
Cypress has some [trade-offs](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/references/trade-offs.html#Permanent-trade-offs-1) and limitations, that is for sure. But is it missing other important things which are important to me as a Mobile Test Automation Engineer? Unfortunately yes it does. Cypress currently won’t make it into my mobile testing tool belt 😢, because it does not support:

- remote execution
- other languages than JavaScript
- 3rd party cross-browser testing tools
- Mobile Test Automation for Android/iOS Apps

([Source](https://slides.com/mariedrake/comparing-testing-tools-cypress-vs-selenium#/21))

But nevertheless (and I guess cypress isn't build for doing Mobile App Test Automation anyway), let’s experiment a bit with it and do some baby steps in Web and API testing.


## First baby steps
The installation procedure of cypress is easy. Here are the things I did in particular order to get cypress flying:

1. Install [node js](https://nodejs.org/en/download/)
2. Initialise a new nodejs project with: ``npm init``
3. Install cypress with for that specific project: ``npm install cypress --save-dev``
4. Open up the project in my favorite JavaScript IDE ([VSCode](https://code.visualstudio.com/) 🎙 or [Webstorm](https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/) 🌪 or shall i just use both at once 🤔)
5. Open up a terminal in the IDE and hit ``npx cypress open`` to start the Cypress Test Runner
6. Additionally I have had a look at the official [Getting Started](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/getting-started/installing-cypress.html#System-requirements) to gain more insights.

That’s about it, six steps and I was done with setting things up for my very first cypress project! Pretty slick isn’t it?

First I started out with a very simple test using [Mocha](https://mochajs.org/) (which is build in to cypress) for creating the [sample_spec.js](https://github.com/simonberner/cypress-baby-steps/blob/master/cypress/integration/tests/sample_spec.js).

![sample spec](assets/posts/200501/cypress-sample1.webp)

Next up I enjoyed myself by creating a [Cucumber feature file](https://github.com/simonberner/cypress-baby-steps/blob/master/cypress/integration/Google.feature) with the corresponding implementation behind it. While developing and debugging or bug fixing cucumber scenarios, one can put the smart tag _@focus_ in front of a scenario to just run one (or of course more) scenarios (out of many scenarios) focused.

![google feature](assets/posts/200501/cypress-google.webp)

Lastly I wanted to experiment a bit with [API testing](https://github.com/simonberner/cypress-baby-steps/blob/master/cypress/integration/tests/sample_api.spec.js). The most challenging part here was to create a proper working [API POST request with a proper body](https://docs.cypress.io/api/commands/request.html#Method-URL-and-Body) 😁 

![google feature](assets/posts/200501/cypress-sampleapi.webp)

All in all: [writing some first baby tests](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/getting-started/writing-your-first-test.html#Add-a-test-file) and [testing these tests](https://docs.cypress.io/guides/getting-started/testing-your-app.html#Step-1-Start-your-server), fells very smooth and is actually pretty straight forward.

I am looking forward to working more on such small experiments 😉.
Here is my repo if you are interested:

<div class="github-card" data-github="simonberner/cypress-baby-steps" data-width="400" data-height="" data-theme="default"></div>
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/github-cards/latest/widget.js"></script>

## Plugins
The [list of plugins](https://docs.cypress.io/plugins/index.html) is quite impressive. In my baby-steps project I currently use the [cy-api](https://github.com/bahmutov/cy-api) for api testing and the [cypress-cucumber-preprocessor](https://github.com/TheBrainFamily/cypress-cucumber-preprocessor) for the feature file Gherkin thingy (thanks [Toyer](https://twitter.com/tottiLFC) for pointing me to this one!). Of course there are tons of other things I want to dive into and explore 🧭!

## Conclusion
Despite the fact that I as a Mobile App Enthusiast can’t use cypress, I am impressed. Setting up cypress is done within a few seconds, while setting up Selenium needs a bit more of these seconds 😉. The documentation is right before perfection! I have probably never seen such a complete guide and information source for a tool ever before. Bravo and a big applause for that folks 👏🏼!  
I think and I might probably be right, that the test automation space has evolved with that tool, specifically Test Automation in the wild wide web with JavaScript. Cross browser testing just works out of the box and I don’t need to install any additional drivers, that is nifty. Coincidentally three weeks ago, I got asked by a senior JavaScript developer which JavaScript tool for test automation I would recommend. Me as a JavaScript rookie and with not much of an idea what one can do with cypress, I said: “I would probably go with cypress and see how it proves itself in your project.”

Developers and automation engineers like to have a tool in their hands which is as close as possible to the “production code”. And sometimes it even may make sense to integrate an applications test automation framework into the same repo as the productive app code. But writing the right tests is still the hardest part of it all.

>> _In order to develop the right tests you need to explore with a testers mindset the different paths of your application and understand from a business value perspective what your end-users are doing and what not._

I am not finished yet with experimenting with cypress, there is more to come in the coming weeks to my repo.

## A bit of music
I don’t know why - but cypress always reminds me of [Cypress Hill](https://cypresshill.com/) and their two songs from the nineties.

<div className="center">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RijB8wnJCN0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xyqVVfj5qE8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>
<p/>
Maybe it’s just me getting a bit older. Let’s see how long cypress can make some noise in the clubs. 😉

Thanks for reading!
Stay safe and happy! 💃🏽


## Further resources which may help
### Blog Posts
[Modern Web testing with Cypress](https://www.mariedrake.com/post/modern-web-testing-with-cypress)
[REST API testing with Cypress](https://www.merixstudio.com/blog/rest-api-testing-cypress/)
[API Testing with Cypress](https://medium.com/@ali.haydar/api-testing-with-cypress-d8c60ed6aa2e)
[Integrating Cypress with Cucumber and Gherkin](https://wanago.io/2020/01/13/javascript-testing-cypress-cucumber/)
[Introduction to E2E Testing with Cypress](https://wanago.io/2019/12/30/javascript-testing-introduction-end-to-end-testing-cypress/)
[Testing with Cypress - Basic API overview](https://automationrhapsody.com/testing-with-cypress-basic-api-overview/)

### Online Courses
[TAU - Introduction to Cypress with Gil Tayar](https://testautomationu.applitools.com/cypress-tutorial/)

### Meetups
[Cypress Meetup Groups around the world](https://www.meetup.com/topics/cypress/)



A Little Bit of Cypress


## Intro
Creating a [CSV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values) out of a list of data (test results or any other kind) in Java, isn’t a big thing these days. But creating a file in Jenkins, feeding some comma separated values to it and then saving that file to your Jenkins build, is a bit trickier if you have never done it before. So here is the challenge I recently got:

_Out of some test result data, create a CSV file which can be opened in MS Excel and make that file available in the specific Jenkins build job so that it can be downloaded as a test-result artifact by the people of department X._

Cool challenge isn’t it! I love doing such stuff! Let’s cut this in some eatable pieces by using the [pomodoro technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique):
* Structure the Data
* Create a CSV file in Jenkins and make it available as artifact
* Write the data to the CSV file
* Download the CSV file from the Jenkin3s build

Sounds easy, right? Well, it does, but if you haven’t done that before, it may take you a while to figure out how to put the puzzle pieces correctly together in code. Let’s have a look at the solution I (and a working mate, 4thank you buddy!) came up with.

## Structure the Data
Data in its raw form is like a pile of unsorted stones. It is hard to process raw data. First we need to structure it to become handy. Putting data into a data structure, is a way of organising data so that it can be accessed and used efficiently.


![Data Structure](assets/posts/200410/apache-datastructure.webp)
([Source](https://www.csetutor.com/classification-of-data-structure-with-diagram/))

For our example we are going to use a Java ArrayList which implements the List interface and add some test-result data to it.

![code datastructure](assets/posts/200410/apache-code.webp)

Great, that was easy right? Now that we have our little structured data set in place, let’s have a look at how we can create a CSV file in Jenkins.


## Create a CSV file in Jenkins and make it available as artefact

![Apache Software Foundation](assets/posts/200410/apache-jenkins.webp)  
([Source](https://jenkins.io/))

These days, a [Jenkins pipeline](https://jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/getting-started/) is implemented within a Jenkinsfile. The Jenkinsfile is version controlled alongside all the rest of the code. A Jenkins-Job will then read the Jenkinsfile from the repo, build up the pipeline accordingly and execute the specified stages.
To create a file in a Jenkinsfile we can do the following:
(For reusability purposes, we first create a variable for the file name.)

![def fileNameCsv](assets/posts/200410/apache-filenamecsv.webp)

Then, as part of a stage, we write the file and save it in the current build workspace as artifact:

![stage fileNameCsv](assets/posts/200410/apache-stagefilename.webp)


## Writing the Data to the CSV file
To write data to a CSV file in Java, we can go two ways. We can either use the java.io package and write the code on our own or we can use a third-party library. Let’s have a look at how we could implement this with our own bare hands.

### Do It yourself
As we already have our data at hand, we need some sort of magic to convert this List of Strings into a line of comma separated values. This can be done with the help of the Streaming API:

![method convertToCSV](assets/posts/200410/apache-convertcsv.webp)

Before we go on and write that CSV String into a file, we also have to think about [escaping of special characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_character) which could appear in hour data (e.g. single or double quotes, new line, backslash, tab, backspace) and which [character encoding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_encoding) we want to use. Let’s keep things simple and focus only on escaping commas (,), quotes ('or") and new lines (n) in our data String. Fields containing commas or quotes will be surrounded by double quotes and double quotes will be escaped with double quotes. We'll eliminate new lines and replace them each with whitespace. For this we create the following method:

![method escapeSpecialCharacters](assets/posts/200410/apache-escapespecialchars.webp)

With all the things from above in hand, we can now finally write the data to the CSV file:

![method writeCSV](assets/posts/200410/apache-writecsv.webp)

Writing the implementation for creating a CSV file can quickly become quite complicated when we start thinking of how we have to handle special characters and character encoding. Luckily there are a few third-party libraries available for working with CSV files in Java which handle this for us flawlessly.
Let’s have a look which CSV library I have chosen and how you can write a CSV with it.


### Using Apache Commons CSV

![Apache Software Foundation](assets/posts/200410/apache-foundation.webp)  
([Source](https://apache.org/))

The [Apache Commons CSV library](https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-csv/) has many useful features for creating CSV files. The CSV component of the Apache commons project is under the umbrella of the [Apache Software Foundation](https://apache.org/) and is actively maintained; that is why I have chosen it.

Also here, as we already have the data ready, we just need to do the implementation for writing a CSV file:

![method writeCSV](assets/posts/200410/apache-writecsvcommons.webp)

As you notice, we don’t have to bother with any additional implementation for dealing with the escaping of special characters and character encoding. We just have to specify which encoding we want to use and that’s it! The rest is handled by the library itself.

## Download the CSV file from the Jenkins build
Finally we can run our Jenkins-Job and while waiting, we drink a cup of tea. Once the job has finished, we head over to the Artifacts section, download the .csv file and open it in MS Excel. Job done!


![Jenkins Artifact](assets/posts/200410/apache-jenkinsartifact.webp)


![MS Excel CSV](assets/posts/200410/apache-excelcsv.webp)

Of course this is probably not the best solution on earth, but we have had a lot of fun to come up with this implementation and make our internal customers happy with it!

Creating a CSV-Report with Apache and Jenkins


When you do a ``checkout scm`` in a Jenkinsfile, the [Jenkins Git plugin]( https://github.com/jenkinsci/git-plugin) does a checkout with a [detached HEAD]( https://www.git-tower.com/learn/git/faq/detached-head-when-checkout-commit) reference by default. The consequence of this is, that when you make changes after a ``checkout scm`` and commit them to the remote repo (from Jenkins), these changes DO NOT belong to any branch. This means that this commit and its ancestors are not bound to any specific branch. One useful use case of this is, when you want to create a release where you only change the version number (e.g. in the pom.xml) with a commit, and this commit then shouldn’t be part of e.g. the master branch. Here an example Jenkinsfile which deals with this:
```groovy

def projectName = "my-first-project"
def teamEmail = "me@me.com"
def isMaster = (env.BRANCH_NAME == 'master')

node {
    def mvnHome = tool 'Maven 3.3.3'
    jdk = tool name: 'Java 1.8'
    env.JAVA_HOME = "${jdk}"

    stage('Checkout') {
    	// Checkout in detached HEAD to latest commit from master
        checkout scm
    }

    withNotification {
        version = calculateVersion(isMaster)
        tag = "v${version}"
        echo "Branch name:  ${env.BRANCH_NAME}"
        echo "Build number: ${env.BUILD_NUMBER}"
        echo "Version:      ${version}"
        echo "Tag:          ${tag}"

        if (isMaster) {
            // Change the version tag in the projects pom.xml
            sh "${mvnHome}/bin/mvn versions:set -DnewVersion=${version}"
            // Commit the changed pom.xml to the detached HEAD commit tree
            sh "git commit -a -m'Release version ${version}'"
        }

        stage('Build') {
            mvnWithSurefireResults(mvnHome, "clean package")
        }

        parallel 'Sonar analysis': {
            stage('Sonar') {
                sh "${mvnHome}/bin/mvn -B sonar:sonar -Dsonar.branch=${env.BRANCH_NAME}"
            }
        }, 'Dependency analysis': {
            stage('Dependencies') {
                sh "${mvnHome}/bin/mvn -B -Pdependency-analysis verify -DskipTests=true"
            }
        }

        if (isMaster) {
            stage('Release') {
                /*
                Create a tag with metadata and message, and add the
                tag to our new commit where the detached HEAD is
                pointing to.
                */
                sh "git tag -a -m 'Version ${version}' ${tag} HEAD"
                sh "git push origin refs/tags/${tag}"

                def lines = [
                        "Job '${env.JOB_NAME}' (#${env.BUILD_NUMBER}) has released version ${version}.",
                        "Please go to ${env.BUILD_URL} and verify the tag ${env.BRANCH_NAME}."
                ]
                lines.each { echo it }

                emailext subject: "New ${projectName} release: ${version}",
                        body: lines.join("\n"),
                        to: teamEmail
            }

            stage('Deploy to Artifactory') {
                sh "${mvnHome}/bin/mvn -B deploy -DskipTests=true"
            }
        }
    }
}

}
 
```

That's it! Have fun and let me know if I have forgotten to mention something important.

Live, Laugh and Learn
Cheers

Jenkins In Detached HEAD


In the past years, I've always used a Mac for doing daily business at my customers. But at my newest customers workplace, they only accept that you work on one of their provided Win7 machines. That IS a perfect example of regression!  

I love

[![Homebrew](assets/posts/180207/brew.webp)](https://brew.sh)

[![Homebrew Cask](assets/posts/180207/homebrewcask.webp)](https://caskroom.github.io/)

to install all the things on my Mac. So when I had to start working on Windows, I immediately looked for a similar packet manager. I ended up with this:

[![Chocolatey](assets/posts/180207/chocolatey.webp)](https://chocolatey.org/)

And here some first useful commands:  
_choco list --local-only_ (lists all locally installed packages)  
_cup all_ (will update all locally installed packages)  
_choco install ChocolateyGUI_ (will install the [Chocolatey GUI](https://github.com/chocolatey/ChocolateyGUI))

Find the full list of possible commands [here](https://chocolatey.org/docs/commands-reference#command-reference)!

Awesome tooling stuff which is quite handy! Have fun with it!

Brew and Chocolate(y)


The other day I've had a discussion with some dear fellow testers on how it would be possible to report unit tests in a pretty way.
After having a closer look into our dev teams karma.conf.js file in our codebase, I stumbled over the
[karma-jasmine-html-reporter](https://www.npmjs.com/package/karma-jasmine-html-reporter) and the
[karma-coverage-istanbul-reporter](https://www.npmjs.com/package/karma-coverage-istanbul-reporter) plugins.
Nice I thought, but how could we get the first one into a pretty html file? Well, just add the
[karma-htmlfile-reporter](https://www.npmjs.com/package/karma-htmlfile-reporter) to your devDependency by simply doing
``npm install karma-htmlfile-reporter --save-dev``. This will then add it automatically to your package.json.

There you go, have fun with the pretty report.

(What’s ``–save-dev``? That’s an option that updates the installed packages in the ‘devDependencies’ section of the package.json file. It signifies that a developer will need this package to work with the application, but it’s not required to run the application i.e. in production.)


automation

Driverless Automation With Selenium

A Little Bit of Cypress

Creating a CSV-Report with Apache and Jenkins

Jenkins In Detached HEAD

Brew and Chocolate(y)

Reporting JS Unit Tests