The Key to a Successful App: High-Quality Assurance
When it comes to creating a successful app, quality assurance is crucial. An app must provide the highest level of quality possible to win over customers and encourage word-of-mouth advertising. Quality assurance plays a vital role in identifying and addressing defects before an app reaches production.
The Importance of QA in Software Development
In software engineering, new features are built on top of existing codebases. This means that whoever is responsible for QA must test not only new features but also existing ones to ensure the app works seamlessly with the new features integrated. As a result, the time spent on QA increases with every new feature, and there’s a real risk that not everything will be thoroughly tested. Bugs can easily slip into the user’s hands.
The Solution: Automation Testing
Automation testing can help alleviate this problem by automating some of the work that QA would do manually. By writing automation tests for features that have already been tested, the team can focus on testing new features while the old ones are tested automatically. This saves time and brings a higher level of confidence when shipping the app to production.
Introducing Automated Testing for Flutter
In this tutorial, we’ll explore automated testing for Flutter and review how to write each type of automation test with an example. We’ll cover three types of tests: unit tests, widget tests, and integration tests.
Our Sample App
Let’s take a look at the sample app we’ll be testing. The app displays a list of products on the homepage, and users can add products to their cart by clicking the cart icon beside each product. Once added, the cart icon changes, and clicking on the Cart text opens up a cart page displaying all the products added to the cart. Users can remove products from the cart via the cancel button or a swipe to dismiss.
Writing Automation Tests for Our Flutter App
We’ll automate three types of tests for our Flutter app: unit tests, widget tests, and integration tests. The type and number of tests will depend on the specific use case and the level of confidence required.
Unit Tests
Unit tests focus on a single method of a class, ensuring it provides the expected result based on the input given to it. We’ll write unit tests for the Cart class, specifically the add and remove methods. By doing so, we can ensure that the methods work as expected and provide more testable and maintainable code.
Widget Tests
Widget tests focus on a single widget, ensuring it looks and behaves as expected. We’ll write a widget test to ensure that the homepage is working as expected. This includes testing that the product list is visible and that users can scroll through it.
Integration Tests
Integration tests help achieve end-to-end testing for the app, enabling us to understand whether users can complete the full flow of the app. We’ll write an integration test to ensure that users can add and remove products to and from the cart.
Getting Started with Automation Testing
By following this tutorial, you’ll learn how to write automation tests for your Flutter app and gain confidence in shipping high-quality apps to production. With LogRocket, you can create better digital experiences and get set up with modern error tracking in minutes.