The REPL (read-eval-print-loop) is a feature that seems to get overlooked far too often. REPL sessions offer a quick and convenient way to try out snippets of code, and with the right start-up option, you can easily load classpaths and .jar files to explore third-party libraries too.

To get ready to explore, install the stand-alone Apache Ivy utility. On macOS, I used the Homebrew package manager to install ivy:

$ brew install ivy

With the stand-alone Apache Ivy utility installed, you can download individual third-party libraries, along with their transitive dependencies, on the fly, outside of a project, with no…

To start development work on a new Android phone, the Developer Options must be turned on first. A few years ago, Google hid the Developer Options on Android to prevent non-developer users from misconfiguring their phones. Now you need to perform something like a secret video game cheat code, kind of like the Konami Code, to enable Developer Options.

Here are the steps of the secret code 🤫

1. Open the Settings app

Selenium provides some really useful functions for interacting with web browsers. In my own automation projects, I’ve used the browser window management methods frequently, and I’m really thankful they exist.

But the Selenium library does not cover everything in browser automation. One type of browser interaction that is still missing is the file upload, or more precisely, interactions with the file type of <Input> element.

sendKeys to the Rescue

Selenium does not offer any class or method to help with uploading a file. If you try to click the “Choose File” button on a form, the browser displays a native file chooser dialog, which…

Front-end web application development has changed a lot since the 2000's. Clicking links and loading new pages is out. Now we treat the browser as an application run-time, and shift all the processing to the client side with JavaScript.

Popular JavaScript frameworks like React JS, Vue.js, Angular, and Elm all follow the single page, reactive, dynamically-updating-elements architecture pattern. And that means that modern, automated test scenarios will need to handle the behavior of dynamic elements.

The Problem

The usual pattern of writing an automated test is to load a page in the browser, find the element you need to target on the…

I’ve been arguing against using Java for test automation code for years. Java is too verbose and its edit-compile-run cycle is too slow to be effective for an automation project.

One response I get back is that someone’s team is so heavily invested in the JVM ecosystem, it’s just not realistic to leave it behind to move to a different language. And alternative JVM languages like Scala, while very interesting, are not the best fit for automation code.

Another alternative, Kotlin, gained a lot of attention last year after Google made it the new standard for Android app development. Kotlin…

QA Automation is a specialized, niche field in the tech world. There’s not many of us, and it’s hard to find information about the tools you should use for the role. So, here’s a sampling of what tools work for me:

Python / Kotlin

You need a language for your test code, and it’s really helpful to use something with a productive environment and a light-weight syntax. On most automation projects, you need to move quickly and get test cases written before the next release. …