PRACTICAL TIPS TO TEST YOUR SERVERLESS APPLICATIONS

We learn a lot of practical tips to perform all kinds of tests in your serverless applications, we will talk about local, unit tests, performance testing, integration and end to end testing.

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☆☆ ABOUT THIS VIDEO ☆☆
This is another episode on the series of interviews “This is not a podcast”, where I interview experts about serverless and cloud topics.

In this episode, I talk to Nicolas Moutschen about serverless design principles, mono repo and then we focus on different testing strategies (local, unit, performance, integration and e2e).

00:00 - Introduction
01:50 - What is a solution architect at AWS?
05:32 - Serverless design principles
13:29 - Monorepos for serverless
19:46 - Local testing
22:53 - Unit testing
51:36 - Integration testing
01:00:21 - End to end testing
01:05:12 - Performance testing

#serverless

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Serverless Applications - Pros and Cons to Help Businesses Decide - Prismetric

In the past few years, especially after Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced its Lambda platform, serverless architecture became the business realm’s buzzword. The increasing popularity of serverless applications saw market leaders like Netflix, Airbnb, Nike, etc., adopting the serverless architecture to handle their backend functions better. Moreover, serverless architecture’s market size is expected to reach a whopping $9.17 billion by the year 2023.

Global_Serverless_Architecture_Market_2019-2023

Why use serverless computing?
As a business it is best to approach a professional mobile app development company to build apps that are deployed on various servers; nevertheless, businesses should understand that the benefits of the serverless applications lie in the possibility it promises ideal business implementations and not in the hype created by cloud vendors. With the serverless architecture, the developers can easily code arbitrary codes on-demand without worrying about the underlying hardware.

But as is the case with all game-changing trends, many businesses opt for serverless applications just for the sake of being up-to-date with their peers without thinking about the actual need of their business.

The serverless applications work well with stateless use cases, the cases which execute cleanly and give the next operation in a sequence. On the other hand, the serverless architecture is not fit for predictable applications where there is a lot of reading and writing in the backend system.

Another benefit of working with the serverless software architecture is that the third-party service provider will charge based on the total number of requests. As the number of requests increases, the charge is bound to increase, but then it will cost significantly less than a dedicated IT infrastructure.

Defining serverless software architecture
In serverless software architecture, the application logic is implemented in an environment where operating systems, servers, or virtual machines are not visible. Although where the application logic is executed is running on any operating system which uses physical servers. But the difference here is that managing the infrastructure is the soul of the service provider and the mobile app developer focuses only on writing the codes.

There are two different approaches when it comes to serverless applications. They are

Backend as a service (BaaS)
Function as a service (FaaS)

1. Backend as a service (BaaS)
   The basic required functionality of the growing number of third party services is to provide server-side logic and maintain their internal state. This requirement has led to applications that do not have server-side logic or any application-specific logic. Thus they depend on third-party services for everything.

Moreover, other examples of third-party services are Autho, AWS Cognito (authentication as a service), Amazon Kinesis, Keen IO (analytics as a service), and many more.

2. Function as a Service (FaaS)
   FaaS is the modern alternative to traditional architecture when the application still requires server-side logic. With Function as a Service, the developer can focus on implementing stateless functions triggered by events and can communicate efficiently with the external world.

FaaS serverless architecture is majorly used with microservices architecture as it renders everything to the organization. AWS Lambda, Google Cloud functions, etc., are some of the examples of FaaS implementation.

Pros of Serverless applications
There are specific ways in which serverless applications can redefine the way business is done in the modern age and has some distinct advantages over the traditional could platforms. Here are a few –

🔹 Highly Scalable
The flexible nature of the serverless architecture makes it ideal for scaling the applications. The serverless application’s benefit is that it allows the vendor to run each of the functions in separate containers, allowing optimizing them automatically and effectively. Moreover, unlike in the traditional cloud, one doesn’t need to purchase a certain number of resources in serverless applications and can be as flexible as possible.

🔹 Cost-Effective
As the organizations don’t need to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on hardware, they don’t need to pay anything to the engineers to maintain the hardware. The serverless application’s pricing model is execution based as the organization is charged according to the executions they have made.

The company that uses the serverless applications is allotted a specific amount of time, and the pricing of the execution depends on the memory required. Different types of costs like presence detection, access authorization, image processing, etc., associated with a physical or virtual server is completely eliminated with the serverless applications.

🔹 Focuses on user experience
As the companies don’t always think about maintaining the servers, it allows them to focus on more productive things like developing and improving customer service features. A recent survey says that about 56% of the users are either using or planning to use the serverless applications in the coming six months.

Moreover, as the companies would save money with serverless apps as they don’t have to maintain any hardware system, it can be then utilized to enhance the level of customer service and features of the apps.

🔹 Ease of migration
It is easy to get started with serverless applications by porting individual features and operate them as on-demand events. For example, in a CMS, a video plugin requires transcoding video for different formats and bitrates. If the organization wished to do this with a WordPress server, it might not be a good fit as it would require resources dedicated to serving pages rather than encoding the video.

Moreover, the benefits of serverless applications can be used optimally to handle metadata encoding and creation. Similarly, serverless apps can be used in other plugins that are often prone to critical vulnerabilities.

Cons of serverless applications
Despite having some clear benefits, serverless applications are not specific for every single use case. We have listed the top things that an organization should keep in mind while opting for serverless applications.

🔹 Complete dependence on third-party vendor
In the realm of serverless applications, the third-party vendor is the king, and the organizations have no options but to play according to their rules. For example, if an application is set in Lambda, it is not easy to port it into Azure. The same is the case for coding languages. In present times, only Python developers and Node.js developers have the luxury to choose between existing serverless options.

Therefore, if you are planning to consider serverless applications for your next project, make sure that your vendor has everything needed to complete the project.

🔹 Challenges in debugging with traditional tools
It isn’t easy to perform debugging, especially for large enterprise applications that include various individual functions. Serverless applications use traditional tools and thus provide no option to attach a debugger in the public cloud. The organization can either do the debugging process locally or use logging for the same purpose. In addition to this, the DevOps tools in the serverless application do not support the idea of quickly deploying small bits of codes into running applications.

#serverless-application #serverless #serverless-computing #serverless-architeture #serverless-application-prosand-cons

Testing Microservices Applications

The shift towards microservices and modular applications makes testing more important and more challenging at the same time. You have to make sure that the microservices running in containers perform well and as intended, but you can no longer rely on conventional testing strategies to get the job done.

This is where new testing approaches are needed. Testing your microservices applications require the right approach, a suitable set of tools, and immense attention to details. This article will guide you through the process of testing your microservices and talk about the challenges you will have to overcome along the way. Let’s get started, shall we?

A Brave New World

Traditionally, testing a monolith application meant configuring a test environment and setting up all of the application components in a way that matched the production environment. It took time to set up the testing environment, and there were a lot of complexities around the process.

Testing also requires the application to run in full. It is not possible to test monolith apps on a per-component basis, mainly because there is usually a base code that ties everything together, and the app is designed to run as a complete app to work properly.

Microservices running in containers offer one particular advantage: universal compatibility. You don’t have to match the testing environment with the deployment architecture exactly, and you can get away with testing individual components rather than the full app in some situations.

Of course, you will have to embrace the new cloud-native approach across the pipeline. Rather than creating critical dependencies between microservices, you need to treat each one as a semi-independent module.

The only monolith or centralized portion of the application is the database, but this too is an easy challenge to overcome. As long as you have a persistent database running on your test environment, you can perform tests at any time.

Keep in mind that there are additional things to focus on when testing microservices.

• Microservices rely on network communications to talk to each other, so network reliability and requirements must be part of the testing.
• Automation and infrastructure elements are now added as codes, and you have to make sure that they also run properly when microservices are pushed through the pipeline
• While containerization is universal, you still have to pay attention to specific dependencies and create a testing strategy that allows for those dependencies to be included

Test containers are the method of choice for many developers. Unlike monolith apps, which lets you use stubs and mocks for testing, microservices need to be tested in test containers. Many CI/CD pipelines actually integrate production microservices as part of the testing process.

Contract Testing as an Approach

As mentioned before, there are many ways to test microservices effectively, but the one approach that developers now use reliably is contract testing. Loosely coupled microservices can be tested in an effective and efficient way using contract testing, mainly because this testing approach focuses on contracts; in other words, it focuses on how components or microservices communicate with each other.

Syntax and semantics construct how components communicate with each other. By defining syntax and semantics in a standardized way and testing microservices based on their ability to generate the right message formats and meet behavioral expectations, you can rest assured knowing that the microservices will behave as intended when deployed.

#testing #software testing #test automation #microservice architecture #microservice #test #software test automation #microservice best practices #microservice deployment #microservice components

Testing Microservices Applications

The shift towards microservices and modular applications makes testing more important and more challenging at the same time. You have to make sure that the microservices running in containers perform well and as intended, but you can no longer rely on conventional testing strategies to get the job done.

This is where new testing approaches are needed. Testing your microservices applications require the right approach, a suitable set of tools, and immense attention to details. This article will guide you through the process of testing your microservices and talk about the challenges you will have to overcome along the way. Let’s get started, shall we?

A Brave New World

Traditionally, testing a monolith application meant configuring a test environment and setting up all of the application components in a way that matched the production environment. It took time to set up the testing environment, and there were a lot of complexities around the process.

Testing also requires the application to run in full. It is not possible to test monolith apps on a per-component basis, mainly because there is usually a base code that ties everything together, and the app is designed to run as a complete app to work properly.

Microservices running in containers offer one particular advantage: universal compatibility. You don’t have to match the testing environment with the deployment architecture exactly, and you can get away with testing individual components rather than the full app in some situations.

Of course, you will have to embrace the new cloud-native approach across the pipeline. Rather than creating critical dependencies between microservices, you need to treat each one as a semi-independent module.

The only monolith or centralized portion of the application is the database, but this too is an easy challenge to overcome. As long as you have a persistent database running on your test environment, you can perform tests at any time.

Keep in mind that there are additional things to focus on when testing microservices.

• Microservices rely on network communications to talk to each other, so network reliability and requirements must be part of the testing.
• Automation and infrastructure elements are now added as codes, and you have to make sure that they also run properly when microservices are pushed through the pipeline
• While containerization is universal, you still have to pay attention to specific dependencies and create a testing strategy that allows for those dependencies to be included

Test containers are the method of choice for many developers. Unlike monolith apps, which lets you use stubs and mocks for testing, microservices need to be tested in test containers. Many CI/CD pipelines actually integrate production microservices as part of the testing process.

Contract Testing as an Approach

As mentioned before, there are many ways to test microservices effectively, but the one approach that developers now use reliably is contract testing. Loosely coupled microservices can be tested in an effective and efficient way using contract testing, mainly because this testing approach focuses on contracts; in other words, it focuses on how components or microservices communicate with each other.

Syntax and semantics construct how components communicate with each other. By defining syntax and semantics in a standardized way and testing microservices based on their ability to generate the right message formats and meet behavioral expectations, you can rest assured knowing that the microservices will behave as intended when deployed.

Ways to Test Microservices

It is easy to fall into the trap of making testing microservices complicated, but there are ways to avoid this problem. Testing microservices doesn’t have to be complicated at all when you have the right strategy in place.

There are several ways to test microservices too, including:

• Unit testing: Which allows developers to test microservices in a granular way. It doesn’t limit testing to individual microservices, but rather allows developers to take a more granular approach such as testing individual features or runtimes.
• Integration testing: Which handles the testing of microservices in an interactive way. Microservices still need to work with each other when they are deployed, and integration testing is a key process in making sure that they do.
• End-to-end testing: Which⁠—as the name suggests⁠—tests microservices as a complete app. This type of testing enables the testing of features, UI, communications, and other components that construct the app.

What’s important to note is the fact that these testing approaches allow for asynchronous testing. After all, asynchronous development is what makes developing microservices very appealing in the first place. By allowing for asynchronous testing, you can also make sure that components or microservices can be updated independently to one another.

#blog #microservices #testing #caylent #contract testing #end-to-end testing #hoverfly #integration testing #microservices #microservices architecture #pact #testing #unit testing #vagrant #vcr

How to Do API Testing?

Nowadays API testing is an integral part of testing. There are a lot of tools like postman, insomnia, etc. There are many articles that ask what is API, What is API testing, but the problem is How to do API testing? What I need to validate.

Note: In this article, I am going to use postman assertions for all the examples since it is the most popular tool. But this article is not intended only for the postman tool.

Let’s directly jump to the topic.

Let’s consider you have an API endpoint example http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/{{username}} when you send the get request to that URL it returns the JSON response.

My API endpoint is http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/{{username}}

The response is in JSON format like below

JSON

{
  "jobTitle": "string",
  "userid": "string",
  "phoneNumber": "string",
  "password": "string",
  "email": "user@example.com",
  "firstName": "string",
  "lastName": "string",
  "userName": "string",
  "country": "string",
  "region": "string",
  "city": "string",
  "department": "string",
  "userType": 0
}

In the JSON we can see there are properties and associated values.

Now, For example, if we need details of the user with the username ‘ganeshhegde’ we need to send a **GET **request to **http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/ganeshhegde **

Now there are two scenarios.

1. Valid Usecase: User is available in the database and it returns user details with status code 200

2. Invalid Usecase: User is Unavailable/Invalid user in this case it returns status with code 404 with not found message.

#tutorial #performance #api #test automation #api testing #testing and qa #application programming interface #testing as a service #testing tutorial #api test

Where To Learn Test Programming — July 2020 Edition

What do you do when you have lots of free time on your hands? Why not learn test programming strategies and approaches?

When you’re looking for places to learn test programming, Test Automation University has you covered. From API testing through visual validation, you can hone your skills and learn new approaches on TAU.

We introduced five new TAU courses from April through June, and each of them can help you expand your knowledge, learn a new approach, and improve your craft as a test automation engineer. They are:

These courses add to the other three courses we introduced in January through March 2020:

• IntelliJ for Test Automation Engineers (3 hrs 41 min)
• Cucumber with JavaScript (1 hr 22 min)
• Python Programming (2 hrs)

Each of these courses can give you a new set of skills.

Let’s look at each in a little detail.

Mobile Automation With Appium in JavaScript

Orane Findley teaches Mobile Automation with Appium in JavaScript. Orane walks through all the basics of Appium, starting with what it is and where it runs.

“Appium is an open-source tool for automating native, web, and hybrid applications on different platforms.”

In the introduction, Orane describes the course parts:

• Setup and Dependencies — installing Appium and setting up your first project
• Working with elements by finding them, sending values, clicking, and submitting
• Creating sessions, changing screen orientations, and taking screenshots
• Timing, including TimeOuts and Implicit Waits
• Collecting attributes and data from an element
• Selecting and using element states
• Reviewing everything to make it all make sense

The first chapter, broken into five parts, gets your system ready for the rest of the course. You’ll download and install a Java Developer Kit, a stable version of Node.js, Android Studio and Emulator (for a mobile device emulator), Visual Studio Code for an IDE, Appium Server, and a sample Appium Android Package Kit. If you get into trouble, you can use the Test Automation University Slack channel to get help from Orane. Each subchapter contains the links to get to the proper software. Finally, Orane has you customize your configuration for the course project.

Chapter 2 deals with elements and screen interactions for your app. You can find elements on the page, interact with those elements, and scroll the page to make other elements visible. Orane breaks the chapter into three distinct subchapters so you can become competent with each part of finding, scrolling, and interacting with the app. The quiz comes at the end of the third subchapter.

The remaining chapters each deal with specific bullets listed above: sessions and screen capture, timing, element attributes, and using element states. The final summary chapter ensures you have internalized the key takeaways from the course. Each of these chapters includes its quiz.

When you complete this course successfully, you will have both a certificate of completion and the code infrastructure available on your system to start testing mobile apps using Appium.

Selenium WebDriver With Python

Andrew Knight, who blogs as The Automation Panda, teaches the course on Selenium WebDriver with Python. As Andrew points out, Python has become a popular language for test automation. If you don’t know Python at all, he points you to Jess Ingrassellino’s great course, Python for Test Programming, also on Test Automation University.

In the first chapter, Andrew has you write your first test. Not in Python, but Gherkin. If you have never used Gherkin syntax, it helps you structure your tests in pseudocode that you can translate into any language of your choice. Andrew points out that it’s important to write your test steps before you write test code — and Gherkin makes this process straightforward.

The second chapter goes through setting up a pytest, the test framework Andrew uses. He assumes you already have Python 3.8 installed. Depending on your machine, you may need to do some work (Macs come with Python 2.7.16 installed, which is old and won’t work. Andrew also goes through the pip package manager to install pipenv. He gives you a GitHub link to his test code for the project. And, finally, he creates a test using the Gherkin codes as comments to show you how a test runs in pytest.

In the third chapter, you set up Selenium Webdriver to work with specific browsers, then create your test fixture in the pytest. Andrew reminds you to download the appropriate browser driver for the browser you want to test — for example, chromedriver to drive Chrome and geckodriver to drive Firefox. Once you use pipenv to install Selenium, you begin your test fixture. One thing to remember is to call an explicit quit for your webdriver after a test.

Chapter 4 goes through page objects, and how you abstract page object details to simplify your test structure. Chapter 5 goes through element locator structures and how to use these in Python. And, in Chapter 6, Andrew goes through some common webdriver calls and how to use them in your tests. These first six chapters cover the basics of testing with Python and Selenium.

Now that you have the basics down, the final three chapters review some advanced ideas: testing with multiple browsers, handling race conditions, and running your tests in parallel. This course gives you specific skills around Python and Selenium on top of what you can get from the Python for Test Programming course.

#tutorial #performance #testing #automation #test automation #automated testing #visual testing #visual testing best practices #testing tutorial