Do you want more confidence that each release is solid? Are you done with users finding bugs that require hasty hot fixes? Today's websites are simply too large and complex to rely solely on manual testing. Teams are investing in automated testing to improve both site quality and night-time sleep quality.

But aren't automated tests flaky and cumbersome to keep up-to-date? 

Traditionally, this has been true. However, there is a new generation of tools (such as Cypress.io, Playwright and others) that are far easier to learn and are much more reliable than the previous generation.

In this session, we will look at:

  • where does automated testing fit in the Shift-Left trend?
  • what does a comprehensive testing regime for Drupal look like?
  • what's a reasonable way to start?
  • what methods are available to handle all the cases involved in multilingual testing?
  • where does Drush come to the rescue for database setup, database reset and common tasks like creating temporary users? How can Drush communicate to all targets?
  • if tests should be runnable against any target (local, integration server, production) how do you (safely) set that up?
  • where do third-party tools like Tugboat (branch-level previews), Testery (server farm for parallel testing) and GitHub Actions/CircleCI/GitLab CI/CI (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment platforms) come in?
  • are there ways to avoid third-party tools (perhaps to save money) using open-source alternatives?
  • what are some best-practices specific to Drupal and Cypress that can reduce test flakiness?
  • what are some of the gotches (and their workarounds) in Cypress?
  • what are some of the big differences between Cypress and Playwright?

Wherever your team is on the integrated testing spectrum, you will find actionable next steps and a clear strategy to gain confidence with your site's quality.

The session will use examples in Cypress but the concepts and strategies apply to all tools (and CMS systems, for that matter).

The new module mentioned in the video is Automated Testing Kit at Drupal.org. Join the Drupal Slack channel #automated_testing_kit for more discussion on automated testing.

About the Presenter

André Angelantoni is the Founder of PerformantLabs.com, a consulting and testing company that specializes in Drupal, Cypress and Playwright. He presents often including at Drupal Camps, DrupalCon and local Drupal groups. His clients include UCSF, Tesla, France Telecom, Renesas, Robert Half, Docusign and many more sites both large and small.

Audience: Intermediate Track(s): Dev / DevOps, Site Building