Process runs slowly when UI testing

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I’m working through the Application Testing tutorial and noticed that the process I had made to navigate through the UI ran super slowly. At this speed, it doesn’t even seem worth it to automate testing when a human could type faster. Is there any way to speed this kind of thing up?

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@william.freedman
Yes, there are several techniques you can use to speed up the automation of UI testing:

  1. Optimize selectors: Use efficient and reliable selectors for interacting with UI elements. Avoid using overly broad or fragile selectors that may slow down the automation process. Choose selectors that uniquely identify the target elements and are less likely to change.
  2. Use wait conditions: Instead of using fixed sleep or delay statements, utilize dynamic wait conditions. Waiting for specific conditions to be met (e.g., element visibility, presence, or state change) can help improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary waiting time.
  3. Leverage parallel execution: If your testing framework supports it, run tests in parallel across multiple threads, processes, or machines. This allows you to execute multiple tests simultaneously, significantly reducing the overall execution time.
  4. Reduce unnecessary interactions: Minimize unnecessary UI interactions like excessive mouse movements, clicks, or keystrokes. Streamline the automation workflow by eliminating redundant or non-essential steps.
  5. Use headless or virtual browsers: Headless or virtual browsers can perform UI testing without the overhead of rendering the UI. This can greatly speed up the execution of tests since there is no visual rendering involved.
  6. Data-driven testing: If applicable, use data-driven testing techniques to execute test cases with different input data sets. This can help maximize test coverage and reduce the overall execution time by reusing the same test logic with multiple data variations.
  7. Mock external dependencies: When testing interactions with external systems or APIs, consider mocking or stubbing the responses from these dependencies. This allows you to simulate the expected behavior without relying on the actual external systems, making the tests faster and more reliable.
  8. Regular maintenance: Keep your test suite up to date by regularly reviewing and updating the tests as the application evolves. Removing redundant or outdated tests and optimizing existing ones can contribute to faster test execution.
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What exact things are going slowly? Opening apps? Reading Excel files? Browsing to web pages? Scraping data? Be specific.

Also, keep in mind speed isn’t the only benefit of automation. Even if an automation takes longer than a person, it still frees up that person’s time and also increases accuracy.