Visual Regression Testing with VRT

Talk Description

A step-by-step guide to setting up and implementing visual testing without relying on 3rd party SaaS vendors. 

There will be an intro to visual test as a concept, explaining the problem it can solve, then a review of the options available (the typical providers you'll find with a quick Google).

These often have generous free tiers but you can find the scale of testing can soon surpass this and require considerable costs. You may also be concerned with sending company data to a third party.  This leads to introducing Visual Regression Tracker which can offer a visual test app in an easy-to-setup docker image with plugin agents for your automation framework of choice.

We'll go through downloading and running a docker-compose file to get the app running locally, followed by how to install and integrate snapshot commands into an existing test framework. We'll then create an example that demonstrates how a snapshot can capture changes to a page.

We'll then discuss how you can take this solution and implement it more generally into a pipeline or across an organisation using a VM or cloud container, providing a company-wide solution that any team could make use of.

Learning Outcomes

• Describe the fundamental practice
• Use cases and risks of visual testing
• Implement a visual testing solution from scratch

Andy Sockett

Senior Test Consultant

He / Him

Software tester with a particular interest in frontend development trends and accessibility. Doing my best to stay educated and maybe help educate others along the way :)