Every online website has multiple digital assets. The main menu, search bar, images, and breadcrumbs make up a few of the fundamental components of the website design. They add to the overall design and operations of the site. One such component is pagination. Predominantly used by e-commerce sites, blogs, catalogs, and data tables, pagination comes into action when there is a large amount of digital content to deal with. Alongside this comes pagination test cases to qualify the component as bug-free and in proper working condition.
We show you how.
What is Pagination?
Pagination is a design pattern for online websites that comes into play when there is a need to organize large amounts of data in a specific order. It divides and displays the content into separate pages, which plays a critical role in simplifying navigation and access to the information.
The goal of pagination is to offer a clear pathway for users to discover crucial content on the website to prevent them from going off-track. On the plus side, pagination improves customer satisfaction and retention.
An example of pagination is Testsigma blogs, which provide readers with quick access to all the posts in an organized manner.
To test the pages on the website, you can either do manual testing or automated testing using tools such as Testsigma.
Why Perform Pagination Testing?
For the same reason, you execute any other testing: to ensure that a basic yet fundamental section of your website is behaving as intended. Issues in the pagination functionality can lead to the loss of potential customers for e-commerce sites and a decline in interested readers for blog sites. Subsequently, providing easy and quick entrance to any part of your website (through pagination) is only going to enhance the customer satisfaction quotient for the business.
Test Cases for Pagination
Similar to every other element and functionality, pagination also has a list of test cases for testers to run. It encompasses both positive and negative test cases with the same goal to validate the authenticity and quality of the component. Let’s look at some of the essential pagination test cases for e-commerce, blog, and data-based websites:
Positive Test Cases for Pagination
- Verify that the pagination controls (Next, Previous, Page Numbers) are present and functional.
- Ensure that the specified number of items per page is displayed consistently.
- Confirm that clicking on the Next and Previous buttons correctly navigates to the next and previous pages.
- Test selecting a specific page number and confirm that the correct page is displayed.
- Verify that navigation to the first and last pages works as expected.
- Test the pagination behavior when there is a large dataset to ensure it handles a maximum page limit properly.
- Check that pagination adjusts appropriately on different screen sizes, ensuring a positive user experience.
- Validate the UI aspects of pagination, i.e., font size, font style, display, and clickability, as expected.
Negative Test Cases for Pagination
- Test pagination behavior when there are no items to display, ensuring it provides appropriate feedback.
- Check if an attempt to go to a page that does not exist shows a 404 error page or an appropriate error message.
- Check the response when attempting to navigate to a page with a negative page number.
- Test scenarios where the specified items per page exceed the total number of items, ensuring it handles such cases appropriately.
- Verify that pagination controls are not displayed when the dataset is within a single page.
- Check the system’s behavior when data is removed during pagination to ensure consistency and accuracy.
We also have a comprehensive blog on test cases for search functionality that users rely on to find specific website information.
Pagination Testing Best Practices
Any testing is successful when testers follow the best approach to create and execute test cases. Adopting such practices prevents missing out on critical tests and helps to get results that are useful in debugging the issues. These best practices for test cases for pagination are tried and tested for your business:
- Gain a clear understanding of the pagination requirements, including the number of items per page, expected behavior, and any specific business rules.
- Verify that the frontend pagination controls align with the backend logic, ensuring consistency in data retrieval and display.
- If pagination is coupled with sorting, test the combined functionality to ensure proper sorting across pages.
- Follow a certain test case template to create tests that align with the requirements of pagination functionality.
- Make sure to add negative test cases as well.
- Validate if the UI of pagination is consistent throughout the different browsers and devices.
- Clearly document test cases, including expected results and any specific configurations or conditions.
- Perform a test case review before finalizing the number of test cases, including the count of passed, failed, and blocked tests.
How to Automate Test Cases for Pagination?
Once you know the best approach to conduct pagination testing, the next step is to put it into practice. With a couple of examples, you can see how Testsigma is an excellent companion for creating and executing pagination test cases.
Consider the blogs page on Testsigma website. We will test if the Previous and Next buttons are working correctly. Here are the steps to follow. Read on how to create test cases in Testsigma using NLPs.
- Navigate to the blog URL on Testsigma.
- Identify the pagination element at the end of the page.
- Click on the Next button available. The previous button will only become active when you move from the first page.
- Verify that clicking on Next takes you to the subsequent webpage. If you are on the 1st page, next should take you to the 2nd page. If you are on the 7th page, next should take you to the 8th page.
- Repeat the same steps to check the Previous button from the 2nd page or any page thereafter.
- Verify that clicking on the Previous button takes you to the preceding webpage.
Similarly, you can validate the UI and pagination functionality using Testsigma. The tool works best for web automated testing, mobile app testing, and automated API testing to offer exceptional automation testing.
But the benefits don’t stop here. Partner with Testsigma to:
- Save time and resources by automating cross-browser testing
- Quickly present the best and easy-to-understand analytics and reporting to your stakeholders
- Harness the power of AI and NLP-based no-coding test case creation
- Integrate your existing tool set with Testsigma
Conclusion
Similar to writing test cases for other functions, pagination test cases are also done in the same manner. Since pagination takes care of organizing data or information in a specific sequence, it is essential to validate this functionality. It is easy to do, and we have outlined the tests you can focus on for checking pagination on your website.
Either write test cases for a manual testing approach or go for automation using tools like Testsigma with all the information presented to you in this blog.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the use cases for pagination?
Pagination is crucial for displaying large sets of data in manageable portions. Common use cases include search results, product listings, and data tables. It enhances user experience by presenting information in digestible chunks, reducing page load times, and facilitating efficient navigation through content.
What is REST API pagination?
REST API pagination involves breaking large sets of data into smaller, manageable chunks to improve performance and reduce the amount of data transferred in each request. It utilizes query parameters like page and per_page to specify the requested page and the number of items per page.
Originally published at https://testsigma.com on December 26, 2023.