Power of Markup Language for Test Cases design
Prephase
Please, stop reading (nice beginning of an article, right?☺) and think for a while: what are test cases? For you. What are they at their core, at their epicenter? Just stop reading and think. The article will wait…
For me, test cases — are simply instructions on modelling of a test situation.
That’s why there’s no any “special”, “standard” or “best” format to write these instructions. These instructions — are simply notes, that help you and your colleagues to understand: “why”, “what” and “how” a product, service or feature operates. And these instructions build a knowledge base about a product or service. A library, if you will.
But you don’t want a chaos in your library. You want structure and order. That’s why test cases management systems manufacturers (I would say) offer you tons of fields to fill them up — in order to bring the order ☺:
Forms — are common practice and they are everywhere.
But you should know, that filling endless forms — is not the only way to write test cases! There’s a really cool and powerful thing: markup language. And this article is about why markup language is so powerful thing and how it could be used in test cases design.
Markup language
If you don’t know what markup language is, then don’t worry — just look at its implementation in Jira and in GitHub. This is so cool and simple!
And, to tell the truth, I am surprised by 2 things with markup language:
- the power of markup language, it’s concept and implementation
- the amount of distrust to markup and, thus, to a limited usage of markup language in test cases design
That’s why I thought about to let markup language to give its power to Quality Assurance Engineers and implemented extended Jira markup language (for test cases design) in SQA Mate test cases management system. And now anyone who uses or ever used Jira, can write test cases in SQA Mate easily!
For example, you can write:
and this text will be rendered to:
“Summary”, “Preconditions” are collapsable!
“Preconditions from parent suites” appeared automatically!
“Keywords” section is not displayed, because there are no keywords set for a project!
And you understand, that this is only a beginning! Technically, you can write your own language implementations and their interpretations with your styling.
With markup language the data (test cases text) and its presentation (rendering of test cases) are separated. And this gives endless abilities to bring awesome User Experience for Quality Assurance around the world!
If you didn’t try SQA Mate yet, watch a short animated GIF on SQA Mate markup language operation on my website and have some fun: try to write a simple test case there maybe?:
If the key is in "On" position, then current flows through the switchh2. Summary
*Goal:* clear from titleh2. Preconditions
# Switch's key is in "Off" position
# Voltage is applied to the switch! Check the current
!! Current doesn't flow! Switch on the switch: switch key in "On" position! Check the current again
!! Current flows
Just copy and paste this text to SQA Mate test cases editor — and see what happens! ☺
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