Golem: End-To-End Test Automation Framework with Luciano Renzi

Episode • Nov 25, 2017 • 54m

Summary

The importance of testing your software is widely talked about and well understood. What is not as often discussed is the different types of testing, and how end-to-end tests can benefit your team to ensure proper functioning of your application when it gets released to production. This week Luciano Renzi shares the work that he has done on Golem, a framework for building and executing an automation suite to exercise the entire system from the perspective of the user. He discusses his reasons for creating the project, how he things about testing, and where he plans on taking Golem in the future. Give it a listen and then take it for a test drive.

Preface

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Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Luciano Renzi about Golem, a framework and automation tool for end-to-end testing in Python

Interview

Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python?
What is golem and what motivated you to create it?
- What was your inspiration for the name?

Why did you choose to use Python for Golem and if you were to start over today would you make the same choice?

For someone who is unfamiliar with the concept, can you describe what end-to-end testing is and the reasons for making it part of their development process?

What is the main goal of Golem

What does the internal architecture and implementation of Golem look like and how has that evolved from when you first started the project?

How does Golem compare to other Python libraries for automated browser testing and what was lacking in the existing solutions when you created it?

What are the differences between golem and robot framework?

What about projects written in other languages such as protractor?

One of the intriguing features of Golem is the web interface for constructing tests. What are the benefits of codeless automation & record-playback functionality?

What are some of the most challenging aspects of building and maintaining Golem?

It seems that every browser automation library is ultimately a wrapper around Selenium. Why is a wrapper necessary and why haven’t any strong alternatives been created?