The world of software development is progressing each day, where applications are constantly evolving and new features are continuously being added, ensuring software quality is of utmost importance. In such a scenario, manual testing can be time-consuming and error-prone. And that is where automation testing comes to the rescue and helps achieve an efficient and reliable testing approach.

Though automation testing is a great solution, it comes with its own set of challenges. The most common challenge that one can face is the availability of resources that can adapt to an automation testing tool with very little turnaround time. To overcome this, the Record and Playback feature of automation testing tools can be a game-changer. In this article, we will discuss about Record and Playback feature to perform test automation and see how TestGrid offers a seamless platform to use it.

What is Record and Playback Testing?

Record and Playback Testing is a technique to record scripts for the actions performed by the user. The script can be re-run or played back to simulate the same actions with the application. The recorded script is capable of capturing different user actions or interactions like mouse clicks, key presses, window navigation, etc similar to the interactions offered by various automation testing tools.

Record and Playback is generally done through a user-friendly interface that allows testers to easily record their interactions, and then play back the recorded script to validate the application’s functionality.

Benefits of using Record and Playback Testing

Record and Playback testing comes with several advantages like-

Fast test creation by recording user actions can significantly reduce the time and effort invested in the test development process, be it manual or automation testing.
Record and playback enable teams to develop comprehensive test cases, hence increasing the test coverage.
The maintenance effort is reduced marginally, as the user can re-record the changed user flow or scenario, hence minimizing the effort required to maintain the test suite.
Record and playback testing can be easily adapted by non-technical testers or business analysts to create and execute automated test scripts, eliminating the need to learn any programming language.
Regression tests can be created using the record and playback feature and executed multiple times to validate functionality after any code change in the application.

Challenges with Record and Playback Testing

Not everything comes without challenges, and so is the case with Record and Playback Testing. It comes with a fair share of challenges that need to be addressed to maximize its benefits.

The recorded scripts can be fragile and may break if there are changes in the application’s User Interface(UI) or element properties. If your project has such frequent updates, it is necessary to frequently update the recorded test scripts too.
Recorded scripts might have limited flexibility to handle complex scenarios or conditions, In such cases, you might have to apply customized logic or use data-driven approach in your test scripts.
Testing dynamic content using record and playback can be challenging as the chance of accuracy is less when the data changes during playback.
Since the recorded tests may contain hard-coded data, executing data-driven tests can be challenging.
With the growth of applications, maintaining scalability can be a real challenge because of limited reusability within tests.
These challenges can be overcome by using Record and Playback testing with other techniques like scripting, or a keyword-driven approach to ensure maintainability of tests.

Key Takeaways

Record and Playback Testing can be a game-changer to boost the automation testing strategy for an organization.
Recording the tests is as easy as executing manual tests and re-running the recording to validate the features.
Record and Playback testing offers multiple advantages, ranging from fast test writing to easy adoption by non-technical team members.
It also has some challenges like maintainability issues, which can be addressed by using it in conjunction with other techniques of automation testing.
TestGrid provides an amazing solution to record your web or mobile tests that can be run on the TestGrid server across multiple browsers or devices.
The Record and Playback feature offered by TestGrid helps to generate test cases in no time and execute them over a range of devices/browsers along with providing comprehensive reports of execution.

Source: This blog was originally posted on Testgrid.