Testing: Towards The Correct Functioning Of An Application

Testing, It is evident that mobile devices are part of our daily lives, and new applications with different types of functionalities are published every day. However, problems are almost always found in the operation of the created application, either due to poor development or poor understanding of requirements. These factors may cause compatibility errors with some devices, operating systems, and versions. For this reason, in software development, it is essential to carry out a test that corroborates its correct operation.

This article will talk about how tests work, touching on Unit tests, Component Tests, Integration Tests, and the types of tests in mobile applications. 

Because they are essential?

Some say that testing lets us know when the app is bug-free, but that’s only half true. Testing is essential to find the maximum number of bugs. However, it is necessary to know that there will always be bugs in the application. We may not find them in the testing process, but possibly a user will.

That’s why testers exist. The testers are the software testers. They carry out the test plan from their computers to find or identify errors. And so, later communicate with them. Implementing the test plan is complex and quite lengthy, so below, we will learn more about how to start this process.

How to start testing?

1. Unit Tests

The tests begin in the coding phase called Unit Test, or in Spanish, Unit Tests. Unit Tests ensure that each code provides the expected results. Developers typically apply these tests when they’re done coding. However, it is not well seen and should not be done since it could give us false information.

We can apply the BDD or TDD methodologies to carry out Unit Tests, which propose to perform the tests first, which express the requirements, and iterate the tests until they are completed correctly.

BDD: Also known as Behavior Driven Development. They are based on user and system behavior. Many consider their tests to be based on user stories with Given, When, and Then.

TDD: Also known as Test-Driven Development. It is based more on the functionalities of the application.

At this stage, any methodology can be applied to perform the tests. On the other hand, the most well-known libraries for testing and helping to achieve them are JUnit, Mock, Speck, Faker, and RoboElectric.

2. Component Tests

Then, we continue with the Component Tests. These are defined as software testing in which testing is performed on each component separately without integrating with other ingredients. It is performed by QA (Quality Assurance), who is basically in charge of quality control in software development.

3. Integration Tests

Finally, the Integration Tests consist of testing the application once all its components have been assembled. They are incremental tests. The next part to be tested is combined with the set of features that are already tested, and the number of components to be tested is progressively increased.

For mobile devices, there are additional tests that usually are implemented in the Integration Tests. These types of tests depend on each project, and these are the following:

Interruption Tests:  The application can experience interruptions, whether due to incoming calls, SMS, pop-up notifications, low battery, network drop, and others. It is a priority to see events or reactions of the application to these events and their response.

Tests with the User Interface (UI): It seeks to evaluate the events before error messages, screen adaptation, font sizes with the device, clarity, images, etc.

Action Tests:  Identify the events after a screen rotation, double taps, extend fingers, close fingers, and other actions.

Mobility Tests:  It consists of testing the performance of the mobile device in motion for cases such as the use of GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.

Connectivity Tests: Performance under different protocols and conditions.

Security Tests:  Validate the application’s resistance to attacks by malicious users, for example, for attacks such as network, server, etc.

Compatibility Tests:  Verify performance when using browsers, operating system versions, operating systems, and networks.

Performance and Stress Tests: Verify energy consumption efficiency, speed, network tests, etc.

Increasingly demanding users

We are in a market with many applications, where the end-user has various options that promise to meet their expectations. Every day due to advances in technological development and greater accessibility to these, especially in the mobile area, users are increasingly demanding and developing more excellent criteria when evaluating applications. Therefore, it is essential to offer quality to ensure the success of our product.

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