Don’t use hard assertions everywhere!

#Assertions #SoftAssertions #HardAssertions #Verifications

Assertions are the guide sticks in test automation. Hence the assertions play the most vital role in test automation to identify issues in the system under test. Adding more meaningful assertions will offer reliability in the functionality of the application.

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More assertions → more checkpoints → more functional validations.

Mainly there are two types of assertions.

• Hard Assertions
• Soft Assertions

Hard Assertions would validate the expected and actual values right on spot, causing the tests to fail on the spot if there are discrepancies.

Soft Assertions would validate all the assertions and if there are discrepancies, would fail after validating all the assertions.

Each has its own usages, advantages, and disadvantages. Here is my article on Hard Assertions.

Assert! Assert! Add more to your automation script

Today let’s focus on soft assertions.

Soft assertions are ideal for scenarios where there are no or fewer inter-dependencies between steps or a collection of steps performed. If there are inter-dependencies, meaning the prior step or the collection of steps are affecting the downstream steps, then soft assertions are not suitable, as the application flow is too obstructed. The general advantage of failing with an assertion is that the failure would give us information to find the cause.

Advantages of soft- assertions

• The tests will not fail right on the spot
• The test will continue until the soft-assertion is asked to validate the expected and actual outcomes.
• All the assertions are evaluated and results are presented irrespective of the outcome.

Disadvantages of soft-assertions

• Screenshots captured during assertion failures…