Welcome to my first efforts at a tech blog!

If you are interested in learning about implementing a Web testing framework in Java using Selenium Webdriver page factory and Junit 5 you are in the right place. I aim to document my efforts to implement one in this blog. I am not an expert, so I do not make any promises of doing things in the best way, but I will try to explain the choices I have made along the way. If you are just here to learn, feel free to move on to the technical posts. For the interested or sleep deprived here is a little about how I got where I am today.

Two years ago I finally left school after over 20 years as a Physics teacher. Deciding to put my computing education from the IT University of Copenhagen to use at last I started out in the software development world as a rather seasoned first timer. After a few months manual testing on websites I was given a testing project that I knew would drive me crazy unless I could script the testing process.

After a few experiments with recording, I soon realised that it was going to be far easier for me to work out how to do it in code. With a copy of Visual Studio I set out to learn how to use C# and Selenium WebDriver to automate web testing. I found it remarkably easy to get started, and whilst my first attempts were far from quality maintainable code, I knew I had found out where I wanted to focus my career.

After cramming through the ISTQB Foundation level exam I found myself looking for a role as an Automated UI tester. Much to my surprise I found myself in a mid size team in a large company building up the entire UI test framework in Java from nothing more than a Proof of Concept. I have to be honest, I found it far more complicated to get things even started in Java than my first efforts in C#. Getting to grips with Maven and Gradle build tools: Trying and failing to implement Dependency Injection in Spring before finally making headway with Guice.

Throw in the intellectual challenge of getting to grips with the Page Factory Model and I am amazed with what I have learnt in the last 10 months. After over 20 years as an educator, I know that I will soon forget most of what I have learnt without doing some work to remind myself. With technologies advancing all the time, I aim to build up a framework from scratch using the most current technologies, something that is not generally possible when working on a commercial project.

Let’s see how it goes. I have a feeling already that this is going to take a lot more of my time than I expect. Oh well, who needs sleep eh?

Alexander