Last-minute tips and best practices for your automation

I am sure I will forget to mention many important things in this book (besides the ones I might not be aware of myself). Before moving on to how to architect a system and put it all together, I think it’s important to mention some best practices.

A common question asked in the testing world is how to test the uploading and downloading of files. When your application needs to download or upload a file, skip that bit during testing, and test all the way to before and after the action. You can use an API call to retrieve the file and then check for specific values within the file. You can check that a form shows an error message if a file is not attached. However, do not waste time making sure that the file is downloaded, as that is up to the browser to handle. If the browser does not download the file, the problem lies beyond your app.

We could say a similar thing about third-party applications; it is good to test the...