Finishing up with Demo!

Today I finally finished my demo with Rose Robinson, my Project Manager and the admin for Systers for GSoC 2015. Every team is supposed to give a final demo on hangout to pass the final evaluation.

My demo was initially scheduled for 1730 UTC 15 August 2015 but due to some reasons it got shifted to 1700 UTC 17 August 2015. I had to make a presentation for the demo and present it to Rose and my mentor, Shweta. I was all prepared and excited for the demo. So around 1630 I connected to my hostel wifi and also switched on hotspot on my phone so that I do not lose internet connection in between my presentation. I started connected but I was unable to connect properly. The connection was very bad at that time. Finally, I was able to connect to the Hangout in the beginning but again lost connection in about 5 mins. I tried re-establishing the connection but only succeeded after trying for 6-7 mins. Anyway, I finished my presentation in ten minutes but again lost the connection :(. Then after trying for another ten minutes the demo came to an end as Rose had to go for a meeting and could not wait any longer. I was told to mail my demo recording to her the next day.

All in all my demo got over but I was not happy. Now after completing this task I have to wait for results which are due on 1900 UTC 28 August 2015.

The demo and presentation are live now :D.  Happy watching!

Completing Meetup Locations Page Tests!

Meetup Locations Page

So the GUI for meetup locations page is ready and I am also done with its testing. There were two things with needed to be tested on this page which are:

1. Navigation to this test - This I did by validating against the title ,i.e, "Systers Meetup Locations" and the text present on the footer of the map.
2.  Choosing a location - This involved clicking on the location name present and navigating to the homepage for the chosen location.

Both the tests were simple and did not involve different logic for admin or a normal user. I am very happy with it :). Hope to see other meetup features soon so that I can carry on with the work.

Happy coding!

Test suites for Portal Complete!

Finally I have added all the test suites for Portal and tests for Portal are almost done. Yay!:D . But the whole of Meetup testing is still left and guess what the UI is not ready yet :( so I have to wait.
I really want to start working on meetup and I am desperately waiting for Shaifali, the student developing meetup feature to at least give me something to implement my generic test :/.

Nevertheless, I cannot do anything in this regard but wait. I hope something comes up by this week at least :/.

First Test Demo Created!

I created my first test demo video today for Systers Portal Tests:D. I so wanted to do it and finally it is here. This is the first time I have created and edited any video :P. It took me two long hours to create and make it pretty but it was fun too :D.

Here is the video..Enjoy :D

Happy Watching !

Midterm cleared!

So today I finally received the results of the midterm and I PASSED!! :D...I received a mail from Rose, my Project Manager informing about the results in the evening. I have to work for another 6-7 weeks and then there will be the final evaluation. Now, I can continue working on my project :).

I am loving and enjoying every bit working on this project and I hope to continue my work like this. The experience is just awesome. I hope my GSoC journey continues like this. :)

Code Submission for Midterm

So today I committed my codes in the github repository for Systers automated-testing. I also had a code review with my mentor, Shweta last night for the same and it went quite well.

Although the UI for Systers Portal Meetup feature(my primary project) is not completely ready for testing, I have added few generic tests for it along with Systers Portal tests and a demo DB test. My mentor will be evaluating me based on these codes and the work I have done in the past month.

The student evaluation starts at 1900 UTC on 26th June 2016. For the evaluation, all the GSoC students are required to submit their answers to some of the evaluation questions on melange under the link 'Evaluation' which will be active when the evaluation period starts. Failing to do so , the student will no longer be part of this program. The same applies to the mentors as well. In short if either of them fails to submit their evaluation, the student will no longer be part of this program. I plan to complete my evaluation submission by this weekend so that I can continue with my project..:)

Fingers crossed for mid term results!

First UI for Meetup ready !

Today I finally got the first UI for Meetup for which I have to write automated testing scripts...Yayy!!:D

So today when I got a message from Shaifali, the student working on the Meetup project that she has merged a new patch, I quickly opened my terminal and made a pull request from the github repository. I was very excited to see the UI so I ran the portal on localhost but was unable to see any UI change. Then Shaifali asked me to add a Meetup Location first :P and go to that URL. I did that and finally the UI was in front of me :).

I started checking all the buttons one by one but only one button was active :/. But still I am very happy that finally I can start with the generic tests according to the UI which can be changed and implemented later on as the dev work progresses :).

I hope Shaifali merges another patch soon. Its awesome to work on something that has just been created :) and I am very happy to get an opportunity like this :D.

Meetup Location UI

Happy Coding!

All about DB Testing

A few days back when I was starting with DB Testing, I was clueless where to start from. I went through many articles but only understood the theory involved with DB Testing. I didn't know how to implement it in automation testing.

To get a clear idea of the topic I approached my mentor and she provided me with a basic idea about CRUD (create, read, update and delete). These four processes are always involved in any database. She asked me to automate the four process. This needed me to follow these steps:

1. Create a DB.
2. Create a table for the DB.
3. Insert tuple into the table.
4. Read from the tuple.
5. Update the tuple.
6. Delete the tuple.

These steps covered all that was required to cover CRUD. But the real challenge was to automate these steps. I started with keeping each tests in separate test classes and then added them in sequence to a test suite but that was a little complex approach and took a lot of space. So my mentor advised me to improve it. In the next approach I kept the functions (create, read, update and delete)  in one class inside different methods for each and kept all the tests in the same test class. I predefined the order of execution of these tests to ensure proper ordering so that deletion does not occur before create. This I achieved by using @FixMethodOrder(MethodSorters.NAME_ASCENDING) available in Junit. This approach was better than the previous one and I was finally able to automate the process !

Here are a few articles that really helped me get a deep insight into DB testing:

• http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/database-testing-practical-tips-and-insight-on-how-to-test-database/
• http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/database-testing-process/
• http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/database-testing-using-selenium-webdriver-selenium-tutorial-28/

Maven works!

So finally after trying for so many days I was able to run my tests with Maven. It was sure a real good challenge to execute it because at first it was giving so many configuration errors. I even thought to give up in between but I don't know why I didn't give up :p. I think its the excitement I have in me for this project that keeps me motivated.

Learning about the configuration of the pom.xml file for the maven project was most challenging but Google never lets you down. You end up getting at least one link that addresses your issue. But fortunately I ended up with a link that not only solved my problem but also introduced me to this awesome report generating plugin in maven called surefire-report. It a very good plugin for generating beautiful HTML reports for your tests. Here is a screenshot I took :P

So, finally I hope I am all set to use Maven for my final project and I hope it works for me then :P.

First Code Review Session

So today I had my first Code Review and Project Progress session with my mentor, Shweta. It started around 1200 hrs, right on time. I had done  my homework by making a list of things I wanted to ask her.

I got up early this morning and was ready by 1130 hrs as I was very excited and at the same time nervous because it was the first time we were to have a discussion after I actually stated working on my project. I opened my laptop and made everything ready in case she needed a demo of what I have done till know.

Right at five minutes to 1200 hrs, I went to the private event page which I had created on hangout and joined it. She was there within a minute. We started off casually asking how is everything etc. Initially after we started, there was some net problem so we were having difficulty in chatting but it went on smoothly later on. Just after we started she told me that she really liked my documentation work which made me very happy because I had really worked on it.

I told her what I have completed till now, what I plan to do next and cleared out my doubts(not looking at the paper I had last night :P and nothing in sequence). I just went with the flow of our conversation. I had planned to ask her things in a sequence but that never happened because after a while I was so comfortable that I didn't need any paper. We also had a discussion on the meetup mockup that Shaifali had prepared and on the codes which I wrote. She gave me few advice for improvements and also to enjoy at times with work :P. She also shared her experience from last year as she was also a Student Developer on the same project.

She was happy with my overall performance. I am really happy to have a mentor like Shweta. Her experience really helps me at times on this project and I think I have an advantage of having her as my mentor :)

Then we ended the session saying bye to each other and she asked me to see a movie. So today I am officially on leave :P.


I hope after this project is over she remembers me as the student who did good work :)

The Coding is ON!

Finally, the coding period has started and I am totally enjoying my work. So the the most awesome thing happened with me today. I was trying to deploy Systers Portal on my machine since Sunday and I was stuck with the same stupid error and was unable to rectify it. But today it got rectified and everything is working now and I hope it continues working fine :P.

Anyway, now I can begin writing actual framework codes for the Meetup feature which will be added to the portal and test them. I hope everything goes fine. It was a good day for work. GSOC sure is giving me an awesome experience and I am learning hell lot of things :)

Results out!

It was around 12:30 am on 28th April 2015 when the Accepted Projects were announced in melange. I had only applied for one project and was really nervous. I quickly went on the home page and typed my name to filter out the list and Yes!!!Yes!!!Yes!!! I was there. The thrill, the joy, the happiness I had never felt before. I took my phone and called my friend who lived with me in the hostel to let her see and ensure myself that I have seen correctly. My hands were shaking with excitement while I dialed her number.

She came to my room with chocolates in her hand, she saw the list and I finally digested that I have been selected. I quickly called up my mom and told her about the results and I could tell from her voice how happy she was. I couldn't sleep that night out of happiness. :)

So, the first step was over and now I was there to begin my work with Systers, an Anita Borg Institute Company for which my project was selected under GSOC 2015. My mentor was finalized after a day or two and it was Shweta, who worked on the same project last year and by coincidence I had spoken with her once before my proposal submission to get an overview of the project and her suggestions really made me write a good proposal. I was very happy to have her as my mentor.

As the bonding period was on, I made my account on the Systers wiki page, contacted Shweta to discuss project approach  and did some homework before the actual coding period.

I had my first kickoff meeting on 21st May 2015 where I finally met Rose, my Project Manager who had helped me a lot during the proposal submission period. I also met the other Automation team members, Kesha, Daisy and Madi. Rose introduced us to the project by going through the slide show and explained us the project expectations, what approach we will follow as I took down my notes. I was so nervous about this meeting as it was my first professional meeting but it went off quite well.

The bonding period was smooth and went off pretty well.

On 25th May 2015 the coding period began and I started with my project. I contacted Shaifali, the student working on Meetup for which I will be developing the testing framework. I also had a hangout session with Shweta where she explained me where I should start from and how I should proceed. I also received my GSOC Welcome Goodies, a pen, sticker and a diary that day.

GSOC 2015 Welcome Goodies !

The very next day,on 26th May 2015 I received my first stipend, $505. This was the first stipend I had ever earned in my life and I was so happy to see my first very earned money in my account.