Tips and tricks for optimizing the performance of end-to-end tests

End to end testing is the most sophisticated technique for developing high quality applications. In today’s time, the application has become more complex as users expect more than images and text. They want a smooth and seamless experience with more interactivity in the application. Added complexity for developing high quality applications as expected and ensuring its effective working requires more effort by testing teams. They call for optimized and high performance of end to end tests.

In the performance of end to end testing, testers may experience hurdles, slow testing, and other challenges. It is important for optimizing the performance of end to end tests. Hence, the present blog will highlight tips and tricks for optimizing the performance of end to end tests to ensure the effective working of the application.

Before going into this, it is important for you to understand the end to end testing.

Dig into end to end testing

End to end tests can be understood as a type of automated testing which ensures the working of web applications. It mimics the steps performed by the tester for accessing the application with the use of a web browser. In other words, end to end test as indicated by the name, thoroughly checks and tests the application from start to end for its performance, security and functionality, and others. The main aim of the end to end tests is to simulate the journey of end users in developing applications.

End to end testing is the most appropriate approach for removing the requirement for repeated efforts for testing the working of the application. End to end testing is often slower than unit testing and functional testing. It may also lead to cause delays in the development and deployment process as the team has to wait for the test suite. It involves the execution of the program with all possible dependencies like logging, metrics, outside services, and database. Thus, there is a need to optimize the performance of end to end tests for fast test execution.

Significance of End to End testing

In the modern application, its development has lots of moving parts, components, and dependencies. All these are deployed on an environment of infrastructure layer which is itself composed of different parts working together. Such complexity may cause erratic failures. Hence to ensure final quality assurance of all different moving parts, it is crucial to simulate the way end user interacts with the application finally developed which are composed of dependencies and components. This highlights the significance of end to end testing of all workflows which range from simple steps to complex workflow scenarios.

End to end test depends on user behavior which is observed in usability testing. It allows easy finding of the issues. As there is much moving modern software, servers tend to behave differently from applications, require configuration settings and external dependencies impact the application. Separate testing will not cover all these. End to end testing has a crucial role in the above steps and overall testing strategy.

Tips and tricks for optimizing the performance of end-to-end tests

Mockup of unsynchronized network calls
The modern online application performs a lot of different works on a single page. This may include visiting a website, and fetching third-party service data asynchronously to produce a certain page. There are many asynchronous activities that enables a seamless user experience by communicating and retrieving data needed and not considering entire page reloads. With end to end testing, all such network connection consumes valuable testing time. You have to wait for the different network queries to respond based on the fact that there is no control over the performance of such calls.

Instead of performing such costly network queries and waiting for its response, end to end testing tools allows you to mimic every network call done during testing. To optimize the testing process, a mock should be done. A Mock is a software testing object which amplifies the real behavior of the existing implementation. In such circumstances, you can mimic a network connection with no need of sending a request. Mock help in preventing request latency and allows for the specificity of the answer. They are useful for ensuring that the tests are not hampered by an external service that is not in control.

Make use of the CI pipeline

With the setting up of end to end tests, you can optimize the test by running it in your CI process. It will help in giving valuable feedback to developers for knowing if they broke anything with a code change. When you have experienced the value of end to end tests, you can do a repetition of the process which includes identifying test scenarios, listing the steps, and automating the test.

Synchronized running of test

The tools for end to end test helps in the sequential running of the test. It goes through specific test scenarios one at a time and runs each step in the process. On completing the test, irrespective of the fail or pass result, it gets transferred to another test. if there are many ends to end tests where a significant amount of time is required, the test runs increase effort for the team due to a surge in waiting time.

In order to speed up the execution of the test, it is advised to look for a tool that offers the running of the test concurrently. It will help you run more than one test at once and you can have two-three test scenarios running together. It will eventually shorten the time for test suite completion.

It is important to consider that it will be difficult to have the test to be run together if it has to run in a specific order. It Is not possible to take control order of the test on the concurrent running of the test. End to end test needs to be run independently without depending on diverse scenario to pass. If this is not the option for the test suite, it will be difficult to take advantage of running tests above one test at a time.

Using adequate data for running tests

In the development of the application and running of an end to end test suite, it is crucial to start or finish with a blank page before this. You can optimize the performance of end to end tests by populating the database of applications and other data storage with the information needed to run all tests steadily and then removing them. Consequently, you can verify that your end to end test functions appropriately each time your team runs them.

Managing setup or teardown process

In the process of end to end testing, there is an initial setup of the tests and action needed for cleaning up at the conclusion of the test. Such phases are called setup and teardown. When such a phase is executed inappropriately, it aids in preserving consistency across test runs however they are also the one of major reasons for the slow running of the test suite.

The majority of the framework has the approach for performing setup and teardown processes. You can either run the action once at the start or end of the test run, or you can run the test before and after each test scenario. The above option can be used in end to end test suites, however, acknowledging which to employ at a specific time can have a significant impact on the performance. You just need to select an adequate process for the test scenarios for optimizing step and teardown efficiency and reducing long-term maintainability issues.

Use powerful hardware

In general terms, end to end testing is very time-consuming and requires lots of processing power. Such tests can do various actions simultaneously like handling browser instances, renditioning your web application, and performing steps in your scenario and others. However, if you are performing the test on a low-end machine, any changes would not make such differences, and waiting for the test suite to run will increase.

The appropriate solution is to update your system where you are executing the test suite. You can invest in an update which can be a profitable investment due to time saving while executing end to end testing and other job works. This will surely optimize the performance of the end to end tests.

Not neglecting the performance of the application under test

The biggest mistake that developers make is ignoring the performance of the application under test and only focusing on ways to speed up the test suite. It is crucial to address the performance concerns of the application. You need to include performance testing in the pipeline. Noticing delayed actions and other behavior early in the development process can aid in solving possible issues prior to your consumers. It will improvise the testability as end to end tests will not have to struggle with slow applications.

Conclusion

In the present market, it is crucial to guarantee your consumer that the application runs smoothly and performs adequately. You can utilize end to end testing to keep up with the required speed of producing high-quality applications. The present blog has given tips and tricks on optimizing the performance of the end of end test. LambdaTest can be used for performing end to end tests in an optimized way. It is a cloud-based automation testing framework and offers cross browser testing. You can run end to end tests parallely which can make the testing difficulty easy. Hence, you can do this for assessing how a user will interact with your program