The Way of the Web Tester: A Beginner's Guide to Automating Tests

by Jonathan Rasmusson

This book is for everyone who needs to test the web. As a tester, you'll automate your tests. As a developer, you'll build more robust solutions. And as a team, you'll gain a vocabulary and a means to coordinate how to write and organize automated tests for the web. Follow the testing pyramid and level up your skills in user interface testing, integration testing, and unit testing. Your new skills will free you up to do other, more important things while letting the computer do the one thing it's really good at: quickly running thousands of repetitive tasks.

This book shows you how to do three things:

How to write really good automated tests for the web.

How to pick and choose the right ones.

* How to explain, coordinate, and share your efforts with others.

If you're a traditional software tester who has never written an automated test before, this is the perfect book for getting started. Together, we'll go through everything you'll need to start writing your own tests.

If you're a developer, but haven't thought much about testing, this book will show you how to move fast without breaking stuff. You'll test RESTful web services and legacy systems, and see how to organize your tests.

And if you're a team lead, this is the Rosetta Stone you've been looking for. This book will help you bridge that testing gap between your developers and your testers by giving your team a model to discuss automated testing, and most importantly, to coordinate their efforts.

The Way of the Web Tester is packed with cartoons, graphics, best practices, war stories, plenty of humor, and hands-on tutorial exercises that will get you doing the right things, the right way.

Genres: Programming, Coding, Technology, Nonfiction, Software

258 pages, ebook

Published September 22, 2016

Reviews

[Alister]

This is a great entry-level book into the world of automated testing for web applications. It is aimed at both developers and testers who haven't had experience with automated tasting - and covers various types of automated testing and how you should approach these using the pyramid model. The book is high level so if you already write automated tests it wouldn't be for you, but otherwise it's great. This would be a good book for test or dev leads that want to understand more about automated testing.

[Lance Willett]

A great introduction to automated testing. Hat tip, Alister. My full review is here: https://simpledream.net/2016/11/01/re...

Alister's review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

[Johnny]

Great book on how to test web applications. If you start from scratch or need to fill gaps, this book will help you. The most important part is that it doesn’t take a big investment or much work to start. The hard part is to reflect and improve, on which this book offers many ideas. It’s a quick read that help you enormously.

[Elias Nogueira]

It's a must read book for every tester, independently if he is a newbie or experienced tester.
Jonathan guide his explanation on the automation pyramid in a upside down way, and I believe he is right. For testers it is a faster learning because they are used to working in the UI layer. But the author also explain really well the another layers in detail and with practical examples.

For developers in a agile team is a must read book too, because he show with some practical programming exercises in unit layer and mocking.

Read slowly and try to do all exercises.

[Jamie]

Very good intro into automated web testing. It has good points for testers, managers, and developers. It helped me consolidate my thoughts and ideas into a cohesive strategy.

Worth the investment.

Well done.

[Hugh Rawlinson]

A great book for a wide audience (developers and testers of all skill levels). Definitely more of an introduction than covering the advanced particulars of web testing, but this is a Very Good Thing in that it provides an introduction to less experienced developers and testers, while providing a shared language and framework of thought around web testing for more experienced developers and testers, which is extremely valuable as part of mentoring, and as part of rallying teams around shared ways of working when it comes to web testing. It will certainly get lent around my team!

[Katja Riya]

A nice & humane introduction to the web automation testing - it's not a step-by-step guide, mainly an overview, that will give an understanding of the topic.
But there's enough examples and code as well.
I enjoyed the style of friendly explanation and reminders not to worry if you do not understand something.

[Giustino Borzacchiello]

If you are looking for a great introduction to the world of automated tests, then this is the perfect book for you.

It is aimed at both testers and developers, even if the latters will find some chapter way too low level.

I really liked the chapter about mocks.

[LIBBY]

I love it. The book presented some really good information and also sited valuable references for reading later. I really liked the last chapter's explanation of test driven design.

[Sam]

It's a good start on some of the basics of UI automation. Frankly, you can learn a lot of the stuff in this book online, but it helped me fill in some of the gaps.

[Joel Hassan]

I learned a bunch from this when I first read it a few years ago.

[Nada]

Very nicely written, beginner friendly.

[Anthony Ng]

Good for beginners.