Playwright Workshop, Who's Responsible for Security, BDD and More

How do you debug Playwright in visual studio code? Is BDD at risk and what was just released that may impact testers views on security? Testing by note in this episode of the Test Guild News show for the week of March 3rd. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this. First up is how to debug Playwright test and so Milan pointed me to our first article by Ashwin who presents a straightforward six step guide for debugging playwright tests written in TypeScript within Visual Studio Code and this guide is aimed at testers and developers with a basic understanding of TypeScript or JavaScript, emphasizing the importance of debugging in test automation development for identifying and resolving code issues in the article goes over a process that begins with creating a simple test script by making an API request to google.com assuring a response status of 250 and Ashwin then details how to utilize VS Code's JavaScript debug terminal to run the script, set breakpoints for pausing execution and analyzing variables for efficient troubleshooting and this approach emphasizes testers ability to debug their code within VS code, effectively ensuring smoother test execution. So as I was looking for new tools, new technology, I came across this article on LinkedIn by Matt Nguyen. So Matt announced that in collaboration with the team at Conformics, he announced the development of Conformics Visualizer, a cutting edge tool designed to merge model based testing with behavior driven development. So the Visualizer really aims to really help with BDD development by providing a collaborative and visual platform for business requirements and testing. And it boasts features such as intuitive visual design, real time synchronization of text, class graphics, data and integration with essential testing applications like Jira, GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, Azure, DevOps and Cucumber JS Conformics Visualizer enables teams to create, collaborate and automate test scenarios with efficiency and accuracy. You might think is really cool is the ability to convert gherkin into models and vice versa, as well as to manage data through easy import creation and drag and drop functionality. This this platform was designed to help accelerate release through automation and it's currently available on the Atlassian Marketplace for Jira cloud users. So thank you Matt for pointing out this new tool. And if you're doing anything with Jira, if you do anything with BDD or you want to just dive into model based testing, here's a good place to start. And speaking of bdd, you probably caught my last episode when I talked about Rack and Roll. Well, I found another article talking about does this raise concerns about the sustainability of open source behavior driven development frameworks? And this article was posted by Dmitry, who is the CEO of Report Portal. Just big shout out to ReportPortal IO. If you haven't tried it yet, you definitely should. It's an open source project as well. But Dimitri is covering in this article BDD frameworks and one of the reasons why he wrote the article is some concerns that came up from some open source behavior driven development frameworks like SpecFlow BDD and Cucumber BDD and curiously, the involvement of commercial entities in the open source projects have actually hindered the progress or sometimes just completely obliterated BDD technology, and major companies seeking to expand their user bases have required rights to the projects, leading to a decline in support once these acquisitions cease to be financially beneficial. And Dimitri highlights some analogies to this based on a science fiction novel, suggesting that, like Extraterrestri in the story, the commercial picnic in the open source ecosystem leaves behind zones devoid of resources and attention. And he emphasizes for open source projects to remain sustainable, they need diverse funding sources, community involvement and effective governance. Without these, the projects risk being open source solutions and depend on the whims of commercial benefactors. And the article concludes with a speculative outlook on the future of bdd, suggesting that the rise of BD generative AI that we've covered a lot on this new show could potentially eliminate the need for BDD frameworks by directly translating requirements into code. Definitely a possibility and something you should definitely check out by reading the article in detail in the comment down below. Are you still not using the screenplay pattern? Well, this might be an opportunity to start now and this was announced by Jan Announcing a big update to the Serenity JS Screenplay pattern tutorial, offering valuable insights for teams eager to enhance their automated Excel acceptance testing capabilities. And if you don't know, the Screenplay patent is renowned for its user centric approach to high quality test automation and encourages the integration of business vocabulary into test scenarios, fostering in theory better collaboration between technical and business stakeholders. And the recent enhancement focuses on demystifying the components of the screenplay pattern, showcasing practical examples of multi actor and and multi interface test automation and guiding users on creating their own automation frameworks. Also, a great solution is Serenity so Serenity JS implementation makes it accessible for existing projects to adopt this innovative pattern, furthering support by integrating libraries that cater to a wide variety of testing needs, including end to end component, mobile and API testing. And additionally, Serenity JS enhances code reuse and and reporting tools streamlining the maintenance and sharing of test code across projects and teams. And this update really promises to help teams approach test automation by embedding domain specific language into the tests that hopefully ensures scenarios not only easier to understand but also aligns with business outcomes, which is the holy grail, I think of any testing effort. So thank you Jan for this update and are you looking for a great way to learn Playwright? Well, I found an awesome resource by Bars who is trying to address the growing demand for Playwright and test automation through specialized workshops. So as Playwright translates from the new kid on the block to the preferred tool for many organizations, BOZ Workshop aims to clarify its unique features, capabilities and how to effectively integrate it into your automation strategies. And this hands on workshop session covers key aspects such as creating Playwright projects, writing and running tests, interacting with web elements and implementing page objects for maintainability, managing the browser status, API testing, debugging, tracing, test execution, and integrating tests into continuous integration pipeline. So it's really has a lot of stuff packed in here. It's designed for software testers and developers, and the workshop is suitable for both beginners and those with experience in web and API automation. And it also offers flexibility in delivery, accommodating an on site or online training sessions that can be adjusted from a full day tutorial to a half day session upon request. And despite not offering public courses at the moment, Boz is open to collaboration with companies interested in incorporating Playwright into their curriculum and to work what I think is one of the premier automation instructors in the industry. Boz's workshop really represents a valuable opportunity to gain real world practical knowledge and skills. And definitely check out Baz and all his awesomeness in that link down below and in this Follow the Money segment. Octopus Deploy, which is a continuous delivery solution, has officially acquired codefresh Inc. And this acquisition is pivotal as Octopus Deploy really amplifies its support for Kubernetes and reiterates its commitment to offering top tier continuous delivery platforms, both virtual machines and cloud native applications at an enterprise scale. And this integration into codefresh into Octopus Deploy not only expands its technological capabilities of Octopus, but also enriches its service offerings to software teams, enabling advanced CD release orchestration and observability across diverse workflows. So who is responsible for cybersecurity? Well, according to the White House, the burden of cybersecurity should squarely fall on the shoulders of tech companies and the federal government rather than individual users. And according to this recent report titled Back to the Building Blocks, a significant shift is needed in programming languages used for development critical systems. This report criticizes the reliance on memory unsafe languages like C and C, advocating for a transition to memory safe alternatives such as C Sharp, Python and Rust to bolster cybersecurity. And this document underscores the importance of not just software but also right hardware choices, highlighting features and processors from leading manufacturers that enhance memory security. However, the report overlooks the potential risk poised by generative AI in code creation, missing an opportunity really to address the challenges it brings to cybersecurity, especially as we've seen in a bunch of different news show, how this is becoming a bigger and bigger trend. The White House suggests that software manufacturers and the customers must prioritize cybersecurity quality as a business imperative, with top level executives held accountable. And this report really highlights what I think is the need for testers and software testers to become more involved in security. So if you're not doing anything with security, here's a great report to point to to your management to say, hey, this is something we should definitely look at because it's coming down the road and they'll probably start having laws and other things in place that are going to make it even more imperative that you get involved now. So for links of everything of value we covered in this news episode, head on over to the links in that comment down below. And so that's it for this episode of the Test Skill New show. I'm Joe. My mission is to help you succeed in creating end to end full stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.