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In this video, we will demonstrate how to add edge cases to your manual tests.
Special Characters
Characters that are not typical alphanumeric characters [0-9, a-z and A-Z].
Can be the ones found on the keyboard or ones found outside like the "registered symbol".
Registered symbol: ®
Sample Test
Name: Invitee - Edit
Setup: Delete all existing users. Add invitee 'Jay McGavren'.
Steps:
| # | Step | Expected Result |
| 1 | Click Edit under the first person. | Person's name is in a text box. |
| 2 | Delete the person's name and type 'Test Person'. | 'Test Person' is now in the text box. |
| 3 | Click Save Button. | 'Test Person' is now the invitee's name. |
| 4 | Click Edit under 'Test Person'. | Text box appears with 'Test Person' |
| 5 | Enter more than 100 characters and click save. | Textbox is red and error appears: 'too many characters, please enter a name less than 100 characters'. |
| 6 | Enter 100 characters with no spaces and save. | Name is saved and the text box stays inside the boundaries of the application. |
| 7 | Click Edit under the saved long name'. | Text box appears with long name. |
| 8 | Enter '!@#$%^&*()_+{}:">? | All special characters are saved as the name. |
| 9 | Click Edit and delete all characters from text box, then save. | Textbox is red and error appears: 'You must provide a name'. |
Teardown: Delete user 'Test Person'.
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Hi, and welcome to the final
video on writing test cases.
0:00
In this video, we're going to actually
putting a lot of the theory from
0:04
the last video into our test case,
and try to add some common Edge cases
0:09
to the text input field for
the edit named feature.
0:14
We should be looking
around the application for
0:18
everything that a user can input.
0:20
The RSVP app has one that we just
tested in the previous video,
0:21
this edit name text box
that we can see right here.
0:26
Now, the acceptance criteria for
0:29
this feature never specified
how long a name should be,
0:31
how many names it can have, or any
special characters that are allowed here.
0:34
Let's try all those out and
add them to our test case.
0:39
We're going to add these test steps onto
0:42
the original Invitee Edit test
that we started in the last video.
0:45
Right now the test is very happy path.
0:49
We click edit,
changed the name, and save it.
0:52
But it doesn't really give us a lot of
confidence that this feature is going to
0:54
work for our other Edge cases.
0:59
Let's add a new step right
after saving the new name step.
1:01
For this step,
we simply wanna get back the edit screen.
1:05
So click edit button with
an expected result of
1:08
Text box appears with 'Test Person',
1:13
which is the name that we
changed it to earlier.
1:17
Note that this is also testing the ability
to re-edit something that we just saved.
1:22
Our first Edge case is users who enter in
way too many characters in the name field.
1:27
To test this we are simply going to
type in as many characters as we can.
1:32
But we expect that the app has a hard
limit of 150 characters for this field.
1:36
So for our next test step,
adding in a new one,
1:41
let's put Enter more than
100 characters and save.
1:46
Let's go back to the RSVP app
just to see what that looks like.
1:52
We don't really care if someone has one
name or multiple names, we just wanna
1:56
limit the amount of characters so that it
doesn't throw off the display too much.
2:00
If a person has one word for
their name but many, many characters.
2:04
So let's just type in
Manymanymanymanymanymanycharacters.
2:10
And we just wanna test that it doesn't
throw the display off too much.
2:18
You can see here that that many characters
does expand how much room this card
2:22
takes up.
2:26
So it'll force the area the box renders
in to be much larger than usual.
2:27
We really don't want that to negatively
affect the app's presentation.
2:31
By the way, a really easy way to test
how many characters are in your word,
2:35
is to open up a notepad application that
has a line number and a column counter,
2:39
such as Adam.
2:44
Or look up a character counter website,
2:45
like the one that I'm at right now
called CharacterCounterOnline.com.
2:47
When you type in the word,
2:52
you should see the amount of
characters there are as you type them.
2:54
It's safe to say that we would want some
kinda error to appear if the user enters
3:03
in more than 100 characters.
3:07
So our expected result that we would
wanna see is Textbox is red and
3:09
error appears: 'too many characters,
3:17
please enter a name less
than 100 characters'.
3:22
Note that this is not necessarily what we
are going to see in the app right now.
3:30
Remember that we want this error to happen
and we want it to be helpful to the user.
3:35
I'm sure you've experienced errors in
programs before that simply read error,
3:40
with no other context for
why that happened.
3:45
When possible an error should both
tell the user what went wrong and
3:48
how to fix it.
3:54
We also wanna test that putting in the
very maximum amount of characters works
3:55
properly.
3:59
So let's add another step.
4:00
Enter 100 characters with no spaces and
save.
4:05
With an expected result of Name
is saved and the text box,
4:12
Stays inside the boundaries
of the application.
4:20
We're trying to make sure that entering
one single long name doesn't break
4:27
the appearance to the app,
but still saves properly.
4:31
So I'm going to enter in
a very very long name again.
4:34
Long name with a many,
many, many characters.
4:41
And when I save this box it should
take up its own line entirely.
4:46
But you'll notice that it still fits.
4:51
One other Edge case I can think of that
will happen pretty often is that users
4:54
will wanna put quotes, or parenthesis,
in for someone's nickname.
4:58
Or they might wanna trademark
someone's name just as a joke.
5:02
So for our next step we want to ensure
that many special characters are allowed.
5:05
So let's go back to the test case,
and add in a special character step.
5:10
Special characters are just about anything
that's not an alpha-numeric character, so
5:15
things like asterisks, parentheses,
pound signs and dollar signs, or
5:20
even more esoteric things like copyright
symbol or the omega symbol would count.
5:24
The reason I wanna test this is
that oftentimes special characters
5:29
present awkward challenges
to the databases,
5:33
HTML links, and even some JavaScript
functions if they're not saved properly.
5:35
Since we're fairly confident that our
users will wanna use these characters,
5:40
let's add it in as a step.
5:45
So let's add a new step.
5:46
And we'll say Enter,
5:49
and then just choose some of the keys
that are at the top of your keyboard.
5:50
I like to enter most of them in, And save.
5:54
This is just a string of characters
that you can easily find, obviously.
5:59
But for fun,
let's also add the registered symbol,
6:03
which I've added to the teacher's
notes at the bottom.
6:06
And I'll just add this in right there.
6:12
You could also enter it as
a special key combination on your
6:15
keyboard if your operating
system supports it.
6:18
Our expected result is simply that
the special character save and
6:21
display on the site.
6:25
So let's add that in.
6:26
All special characters,
Are saved as the name.
6:28
Lastly, there will probably be some
cases where users delete the name and
6:36
forget to add the new one before saving.
6:40
So let's verify that the name field
is required when editing the name.
6:43
If a user erases everything in the field,
6:47
we will want to remind
them to enter something.
6:49
So for our last step let's write, Edit and
6:52
delete all characters from text box,
then save.
6:58
Our expected result would be,
Textbox is red and
7:05
error appears: 'You must provide a name'.
7:12
Great, note on that last step I added
a lot of our previous steps into one.
7:21
Tests should generally
start very atomically.
7:28
But as the steps become more repetitive
it's okay to start putting some
7:30
simple steps together,
7:35
especially after we've established that
those actions work in previous steps.
7:37
And that does it for
building out our first test case, and
7:42
adding in some common Edge cases.
7:46
We're now testing more than the happy
path of editing a username,
7:48
we're also testing Edge cases where
the user might experience an error.
7:53
We also want to make sure that errors
are helpful to the user when they
7:57
experience them,
with some sort of advice on how to fix it.
8:02
Edge cases are all about
thinking outside the box.
8:06
So hopefully these examples will help
you think of ways to do that within
8:09
the features that you'll
be writing tests for.
8:13
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