Automate Your Testing with the Magento Test Automation Framework

Testing. Testing. Are you there? Good. Now that we’ve got your attention, we want to tell you about the new Magento Test Automation Framework, or TAF for short.

This software package is ideal for running repeated functional tests against a normally installed Magento application. And if you’re a developer or QA specialist, you’re in for a treat. You can quickly develop all kinds of tests for the current Magento version without having to tediously build an automation infrastructure.

Besides running repeated tests, Magento TAF can also be used to create tests and write test automation scripts. Test automation scripts created within the framework can be used for testing most Magento functionality. And we’re constantly updating the Selenium-based framework to cover even more tests and meet users’ broad needs.

In this latest release of the framework, we’ve introduced a robust set of new tests and capabilities:

We’ve created a comprehensive Smoke Test Suite that evaluates the full range of functionality of the Magento Community Edition. This suite covers all test cases that are run during Magento nightly builds and tested by our development team. And it’s designed specifically for developers to use and expand upon. Test failure errors happen. And when they do, Magento TAF captures and stores screenshots of any open pages in .png and html formats in the tmp/screenshot folder. If a JavaScript error occurs, the screenshot is captured and stored in the .png format. And Markup errors are captured and stored in the html format. The failed test name contains the class name, test name and a timestamp, this way it’s easy to retrieve the screenshot. And the full path to the screenshot is stored in a log next to the error message so it can be accessed directly. With Magento TAF, you can test as many UI areas as you’d like. This comes in especially handy when testing several store views or stores utilizing different designs. Each store – or store view – can have a unique UI map but operate with the original set of tests. This removes nesting and naming restrictions for UI map folders and allows users to organize them as they wish.

The UI areas can be determined in the local.yml file for each url to be used by Magento TAF. Based on user-defined urls, Magento TAF automatically detects which set of UI maps should be used and loads the relevant descriptors for the current page. With this enhancement, the tester doesn’t have to worry about switching between UI areas within the test body. Users can declare separate UI maps for non-Magento side services specific to their store and write tests in the same way they’re written for Magento services.

See the Installation Guide under “Example of config.yml File” for an example of a UI map area declaration. Please note, before your first run, search for the ‘YOUR CREDENTIALS’ string within the data folder and update that value with your account credentials.

Magento TAF’s newest features help take the task out of testing. And, even though it just came down the product pipeline, it’s already been adopted and put to good use by many developers. In fact, we have to give a virtual fist pump to Kristof Ringleff from Fooman and Nick Jones (punkstar) from Meanbee for all their contributions.

To download the Magento TAF, go to the Magento Test Automation Framework section at the bottom of this page:

If you’d like to read the complete repository, installation and configuration guidelines, check them out at:

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