Mastering Monkey Testing: Selenium & WebDriverIO Automation

What Is Monkey Testing?

Monkey testing is a software testing technique where users provide random inputs to an application or system to observe its behavior and identify potential crashes. This approach is often automated through random, automated unit tests to ensure robustness and detect unforeseen issues.

Monkey testing is broadly classified into 3 types:

• Dumb Monkey testing or Ignorant Monkey testing
• Smart Monkey testing
• Brilliant Monkey testing

Dumb or Ignorant Monkey

This is when you perform testing without any understanding of the software. You are unaware of the expected outcomes, unaware of the inbound and outbound workflows, even unaware of the valid inputs for the test script. Being a dumb monkey is like walking in the dark and you might have a tough time realizing whether you have come across a bug or not. However, when you would stumble across a bug then chances are that it may be a critical one and also a rare one to come across.

Smart Monkey

This is when you and your team are well aware of the web application under test. You realize where the hyperlinks should lead you, and other expected outcomes too. Being a smart monkey means that you are aware of the invalid outcomes and are trying to break the web application to face them.

Brilliant Monkey

This is when you are an expert of the web application and you know the entire requirements of the testing. Being a brilliant monkey means that you are a virtuoso of the domain for which you need to perform testing.

For example: If you are performing cross browser testing, then you are aware of the browser testing matrix, and are defining your Selenium desired capabilities with respect to the matrix.

You are acknowledged about the latest code changes and modules being modified, or added in the production.

You are ready to perform testing with a list of unsupported web elements for different browsers and browser versions, running on operating systems for mobile and desktop.

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Here’s a short glimpse of the Selenium JavaScript 101 certification from TestMu AI:

Why Monkey Testing?

You might be wondering about the relevance of monkey testing. Is it even necessary? Well, let us take an example of a heatmap from a website.

Heatmap indicates where the visitors interacted with your website and in what volume. The area with red heat indicates the majority of user interaction while the area of blue heat indicates a minority of user interactions.

This is a random website and you look at the area that was clicked by the users. Many times it happens that an unwanted link is often unobserved until clicked upon. And if your customer finds that link before you do then I don’t consider that it is going to be healthy for your organization.

Which is why you need to automate monkey testing. With that said, let us quickly review the pros and cons of monkey testing.

Advantages of Monkey Testing

• Users can find unexpected bugs.
• Not required special skills.
• Check the reliability and stability of System.
• Perform out of the box scenario.
• Can handle dynamic links generation.
• It helps to break the entire system.

Disadvantages of Monkey Testing

• Bug reproduction is very difficult.
• No fixed result.
• Random input data.
• Longer execution time.

Now, that we are well-versed with the concept of monkey testing. It is time to jump into action and automate monkey testing with WebdriverIO and Selenium.

Monkey Testing Example With Real Time Scenario

Say, you have a website and have added a couple of entries in your header. Now, you wish to test whether the hyperlinks are clickable or not. You do not plan to validate where the hyperlinks are taking you to so you are unaware of the landing pages that they might go to. You are only to break the website header. This represents you as an ignorant or dumb monkey, no pun intended.!!

Scenario For Monkey Testing with WebdriverIO:

• Open TestMu AI Homepage.
• Collect header menu links.
• Click on randomly on each menu link.

Demo WebDriverIO JavaScript

To achieve this scenario I will present you a Selenium automation testing script for WebdriverIO. The automation script will open in the Chrome browser and will store all header menu links in one javascript array. Once I got all the links elements in the array, I stored the length of that array. With that length, I am looping and using javascript math.random() method to get random numbers between 0 to a length of elements and performing click operation.

const assert = require("assert");
describe("Open Web browser in the chrome", () => {
    it("Page should open", () => {
        browser.url("https://www.lambdatest.com/");
        const title = browser.getTitle();
        assert.strictEqual(
            title,
            "Cross Browser Testing Tools | Free Automated Website Testing | LambdaTest"
        );
    });
});
 
describe("Perform Random click", () => {
    it("Random click on Header Menu should perform based on random index ", () => {
        const headerMenuLinks = $$(".//div[@id='navbarSupportedContent']/ul/li");
        const linksCount = headerMenuLinks.length;
 
        for (i = 0; i < linksCount - 1; i++) {
            let randomIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * linksCount);
            headerMenuLinks[randomIndex].click();
            browser.back();
            browser.pause(3000);
        }
    });
});

Code Walkthrough for Monkey Testing with WebdriverIO

Firstly, we have imported the assert library to leverage assertions in our automation testing script.

const assert = require("assert");

describe() allows us to keep all our tests under one function. In our case, we have defined two describe method. One is “Open Web browser in the chrome” and another one is “Perform Random click”.

describe("Open Web browser in the chrome", () => {
// Some code   
});
 
describe("Perform Random click", () => {
// Some code   
});

Each describe() can have multiple it() which is your test case. You can write N number of test cases under describe function.

it("Page should open", () => {
     // some code
    });

The below line of code opens the given URL in the Google Chrome browser. Here browser is equal to webdriver variable with that you can get all webdriver related methods.

browser.url("https://www.lambdatest.com/");

The below line of code helps you to open website page title.

const title = browser.getTitle();

Below code assert the page title with the expected page title.

assert.strictEqual(title,"Cross Browser Testing Tools | Free Automated Website Testing | LambdaTest");

Below line of code finds the header links web elements and stores in the javascript array. Here, $$() is as equal to findElements() method on java

const headerMenuLinks = $$(".//div[@id='navbarSupportedContent']/ul/li");

Below line of code gets the length of the array and stores the value into the variable

const linksCount = headerMenuLinks.length;

Below line of code loops until link count and generate random numbers then click on header links randomly.

for (i = 0; i < linksCount - 1; i++) {
            let randomIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * linksCount);
            headerMenuLinks[randomIndex].click();
            browser.back();
            browser.pause(3000);
  }

That’s great!!! You have understood the sample problem and its advantages. Now, how to execute it?

Executing Test Execution on Local Machine

In case, if you have changed your test case folder name then follow this. Before running this test, you need to:

• Open wdio.conf.js file.
• Find the specs: property and change the path according to your test case folder.
• Save the file.

Now, you are good to execute the Selenium automation testing script for monkey testing with WebdriverIO. Just type this command in the terminal/ cmd and press enter.

./node_modules/.bin/wdio run wdio.conf.js

Mac Operating System

The execution result console looks like the below screenshot.

You can see one specs file is passed and in that specs file, we have written two test cases that are also passed.

Windows Operating system

The above whole setup is performed on the mac operating system. If you want to run the whole step up for the windows system then follow the below steps:

• Open Specify Test Files what is wdio.conf.js under the project root folder.
• Find the “capabilities” section.
• Add “platformName: ‘Windows 10’”.

After that you can go ahead and execute the Selenium automation testing script for monkey testing with WebdriverIO.

Kudos! You have successfully executed Monkey testing with WebdriverIO.

What if my test suite is larger?

Your testing requirements may be larger. You may have to execute automated browser testing over a variety of browser + browser versions + OS combinations. Doing so can take a considerable amount of time unless you plan to leverage parallel testing with Selenium Grid.

Keep in mind though, doing so with an in-house infrastructure is going to pinch you. Why?

Well, you say you come up with a browser testing matrix and filtered out your top 50 browsers + OS combinations. Now, to test them you would have to set up your Selenium Grid for these 50 combinations. Now, every month a new browser version from a different vendor would be out, new devices would be rolled into the market. Expanding your Selenium Grid will not only demand for expensive hardware resources but also for more time. Ultimately, you will be putting more time and effort in maintaining the inhouse Selenium Grid rather than automation testing with Selenium.

What can you do? Start Selenium automation testing with TestMu AI.

This is why it is recommended to go for a cloud-based Selenium Grid such as TestMu AI. With TestMu AI, you can execute Selenium automation testing on 3000+ real browsers running on real operating systems for both desktop and mobile. Our Selenium Grid is compatible with every test automation framework and programming language compatible with Selenium. We also help you fasttrack your browser testing experience by providing third party integrations with CI/CD tools, project management tools, instant messaging tools, codeless automation tools, and more.

Check out TestMu AI Integrations