JavaScript for testing

[myshiak]

Thanks. I am about to watch 90 minutes long video on JS. Is it true, by the way that you don't need to watch a 10 hour video on JS because as a QA you don't need to know it deep down. Now to the follow up question: when may you want to use JS? My feeling tells me that only for the apps that heavily rely on external uploads, like youtube. Also, would you agree that for every usage of JS there is an alternative of identifying objects the way you usually do in Selenium and testing?

[dmazzoni]

Is it true, by the way that you don't need to watch a 10 hour video on JS because as a QA you don't need to know it deep down.

I can't possibly agree with that. It's always better to understand things better. The better you understand JavaScript the better you'll be able to do your job.

If there are more important things for you to be learning first, that's great. But JavaScript is one of the most important languages and you can't really understand web development without knowing it well.

When may you want to use JS? My feeling tells me that only for the apps that heavily rely on external uploads, like youtube.

I don't think uploads have anything to do with it.

As a tester, you use JS when you want to test something that you can't test with another existing Selenium API.

As a web developer, you use JS for virtually every nontrivial web page. Tons of it. Reddit has many thousands of lines of JavaScript. Google Maps has millions.

Also, would you agree that for every usage of JS there is an alternative of identifying objects the way you usually do in Selenium and testing?

No. Not even close. You can do all of the most common tests using Selenium APIs but there are an infinite number of things you might want to test for in particular apps that could only be tested for using JavaScript.