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Author: Alexander

Moments That Make You Proud

Moments That Make You Proud

Most often when an internal email from a CEO makes it out onto social media it is a sign of a company in turmoil. Today however I want to take the time to give a shout out to our CEO, Richard Parker for an email and blog post about our company values that he shared with us yesterday. I feel that his words are incredibly powerful so, with his permission, I would like to share them with you today: Subject:…

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Do your tests fail the right way?

Do your tests fail the right way?

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Writing automated API tests

It’s not much help failing unless they tell you what went wrong. A while back I wrote an article about the challenges of authentication for Automated API tests. At work we have also recently started rolling out the first API tests on a new framework with all new Authorisation code. The rollout went fine until literally the last production environment and then bam: The tests failed throwing a random de-serialisation exception. Worse still, the exception was thrown in a library…

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Do you lack time, or focus?

Do you lack time, or focus?

Like many people, I have found 2020 very challenging. I always feel that there is not enough time for everything I need to do, but this year especially I have noticed how much multiple priorities reduce my productivity. When juggling multiple projects what can you do to maximise focus, and minimise disruption? Here are my thoughts and ideas that I find are helping me to clear the fog. The myth of effective multi-tasking. My wife will tell you that I…

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The curious case of the missing NUnit3 parameter.

The curious case of the missing NUnit3 parameter.

I had one of those days last week. Three hours spent trying to work out why my code wasn’t behaving: A test parameter was clearly in the applied RunSettings file, but when I tried to call the value from code it never changed from my default value. Why was it hiding from me? The background You know the deal, before logging off I had the work 90% finished. In the morning, I JUST needed to add some configuration to ensure…

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It’s all about the “Auth”

It’s all about the “Auth”

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Writing automated API tests

In the first post in this series I shared my horror in discovering that my process for Authenticating my API tests was broken. Suddenly I had no means to make the API calls required to test that my services were responding as expected. So what exactly do I mean by an Auth service? The two “Auths” I have gone to great lengths to build up my super new data service, the best in the world. Now I want to release…

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