Sometimes I think that a Tester must need to know to code to write better automated test scripts. We have a good number of tools that require a good amount of coding such as Selenium, Protractor, Cypress, Rest Assured, etc. There are some tools that require less coding but for better assertions and extension of framework, we need to add external libraries.
We develop any framework keeping in mind that it must be easy to use and provides many capabilities. Just for an example – If we are developing a UI framework using Selenium WebDriver we should keep below points in mind:-
- Overloaded Keywords to perform actions like click, type etc.
- Inbuilt support for reporting
- Utilities to read data from various external sources
- Database connection utils
- Parallel execution
- Cross-browser testing
- Custom assertions
There are many more. The only purpose is to make it easier to use and just call methods to perform actions.
There is an open-source framework that makes life easier for Test Automation professionals – Karate – Test Automation Made simple.
Karate framework is developed by Peter Thomas employed at Intuit. As per GitHub page of Karate Framework – Karate is the only open-source tool to combine API test-automation, mocks, performance-testing, and even UI automation into a single, unified framework.
Behavior-driven development (BDD) is an Agile software development process that focuses on collaborative development by keeping everyone on the same page of understanding. Karate framework has used this concept well and made it easy to use for any non-programmers as well.
- Open-source
- Supports API Test automation, UI test automation, Performance testing, and mocking
- Supports REST, SOAP API and GraphQL
- Uses BDD syntax i.e. Test are written in a Gherkin format
- There is no need to write any step definitions
- The official page of the Karate framework says that Java knowledge is not required but I will say you need to have basic knowledge of Java with build tools knowledge such as maven or Gradle.
- We just need to write simple plain scripts in a feature file with keywords and no need to write step definitions.
- No compilation needed
- Elegant DSL syntaxes with JsonPath and XmlPath support
- Powerful assertions for JSON and XML
- Fully featured debugger
- Easy validation of payload structure
- Supports data-driven testing
- Supports tagging and grouping of tests
- Built-in support for switching configuration across different environments (e.g. dev, QA, pre-prod)
- Supports seamless integration with CICD and Git
- Supports Junit 4 and Junit 5
- Parallel execution
- Support reading of CSV and Yaml files
- Built-in test reports and easy integration with maven plugin for a much better report
- Supports cross-browser web UI automation testing
- Supports dekstop automation
- Integration with Gatling – A tool for performance testing
- Mocking of API
- Embedded JavaScript engine that allows you to build a library of re-usable functions that suit your specific environment or organization
- Inbuilt retry mechanism
- Supports hooks
I understand Karate Framework is a kind of keyword-driven framework where every action has a keyword and we just need to call that keyword.
This is just an introduction post about Karate Framework and it will be followed by a series of detailed posts covering each concept of the Karate framework.
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