Good news for Selenium WebDriver lovers, you can execute test scripts steadily without troubleshooting issues due to time lag. Since version 7.0.0, Katalon Studio Smart Wait feature is now ready to hand with the power over Selenium wait issues without adding any code.
Timing Issue: The Villain of The Piece
The front-end stack such as JavaScript and Ajax has always been a major focus of web applications. Businesses are striving to enhance user interaction with elements on the web page at any time intervals after it finishes loading on the browser.
Timing issue has remarkably taken a rise in automated testing as the machine doesn’t have a timekeeper to tell when to take action. Therefore, testers may be suddenly confronted by Selenium exceptions such as: NoSuchElementException, StaleElementReferenceException, or ElementNotVisibleException.
Many companies attempt to develop a solution to the Selenium wait issue — but not really practical. The issue is more likely to be alleviated or avoided rather than resolved comprehensively. You can tell, the Implicit and Explicit wait commands are the most prominent among all solutions.
However, every coin has two sides. They also come with risks and concerns.
- Implicit wait directs the WebDriver to wait for the defined time before throwing the NoSuchElementException exception. Once the Implicit Wait is in place, the test execution depends on external commands to resume or slow down. Furthermore, the wait time varies depending on the situation, which results in wasteful waiting time or higher failure rate for short wait.
- Explicit wait directs the WebDriver to wait until a certain condition occurs before proceeding test execution with an ElementNotVisibleException exception. It is more intelligent than Implicit Wait as it enables the program to pause for dynamically loaded Ajax elements. However, there are some specific loaded elements that are visible but not interactive with Explicit Wait.
Above all, Selenium requires programming expertise in manually inserting code of wait statements. Likewise, misunderstanding when to apply either implicit or explicit waits could result in more problems
Thus, the solution itself becomes the villain of the piece. Many pain points during the test execution phase and test analysis phases, for instance time-consuming test creation, defective code, unstable output, low-quality application under test (AUT), more complicated debugging and test maintenance.
Katalon Studio Smart Wait Hit The Spot
Automatically wait for front-end processes
With Smart Wait, your web page will automatically wait for all front-end processes to finish loading before moving on, which keeps test execution steady. Then automation testers don’t have to worry about unstable outputs anymore. This will relieve them of burdensome false alarms as well as the stagnant real-failure solving process.
Speed up test execution
Automation testers can maintain rapid test execution and stable test results, especially during overnight-batch execution where unexpected failures can delay an entire process, and lack of available employees to re-run.
More insightful analytics
Test history and analytics are clear enough to identify operation defects or gain insights. Therefore, team productivity will be improved, and reaching more appropriate data-driven decisions.
As a result…
Test creation time is remarkably reduced since timing control codes are eliminated, which leaves more bandwidth for QA teams to shift their focus towards testing scenarios and test quality.
Moreover, Katalon Studio Smart Wait will help reduce the maintenance cost and effort while dealing with the timing codes. Developing and deploying test scripts now becomes less troublesome, even in a highly scalable environment.
How does Katalon Studio Smart Wait work?
To start using Smart Wait, you need to install Katalon Studio version 7. Download here
There are two ways to apply Smart Wait: to all elements of a project, or to a specific element of a test script.
Apply Smart Wait to all elements of a project
In Katalon Studio, go to:
- Projects > Settings
- On the left sidebar, select Execution
On the right sidebar, under Default Smart Wait, select Enable
Apply Smart Wait to a specific element of a script
To use the Smart Wait function for certain test elements, it’s important that you disable Default Smart Wait in Project Settings:
- Go to Projects > Settings
- On the left sidebar, select Execution
- On the right sidebar, under Default Smart Wait, select Disable
Use the keywords enableSmartWait and disableSmartWait keywords to enable and disable this function, respectively.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Katalon Studio 7 rolls out the cutting-edge Smart Wait feature which provides a springboard to handle Selenium timing issues flawlessly. Thus, users reduce time considerably running the waiting script while prevent failed test cases when leaving space for loading elements. More importantly, packaged with this innovation and other enhanced features, Katalon Studio 7 can be considered a sustained cross-platform test automation solution tailored for teams at scale.
Read more to take a glance at other 8 significant features of Katalon Studio version 7.0.0.