Automated Testing for the Modern Web

In this talk we’ll look at the architecture behind automated testing tools built on top of WebDriver and compare it to Cypress - a new, refreshing approach to testing web applications.

End-to-end tests are a crucial part of the testing pyramid, yet they are often overlooked entirely. They are notorious for being hard to set up, flaky when they run, and slow to debug.

Why is running end-to-end tests so unreliable? Is there a way to write useful end-to-end tests quickly without the hair-pulling frustration?

In this talk we’ll look at the architecture behind automated testing tools built on top of WebDriver. We’ll explore the communication flow between WebDriver and the browser to uncover why end-to-end testing for the web has been so temperamental.

Then we’ll delve into Cypress.io - a new, refreshing approach to testing web applications. We’ll examine Cypress’ anatomy and show how its non-reliance on WebDriver makes it a better fit for testing the modern web. Using this new tool, your tests can react to your application’s events in real time, read or alter web traffic on the fly, and programmatically interact and control your application while testing. You’ll walk away with the means to have your tests reliably run and quickly execute, giving you the ability to test your applications while you develop for the first time.