How To Use AI To Make Your Jest Testing Smarter?

Anushree Chatterjee

Artificial intelligence (AI) is like this huge tree, ever-growing and constantly impacting all those around it. Pick any field that uses some form of digitization, and you’ll see that AI’s roots have also grown into it.

Look at the healthcare. You’d think, what work does AI have over here? But there is a lot that AI can aid in, like revolutionizing healthcare with applications like predictive analytics for patient care, personalized medicine, drug discovery, and robotic surgery. Machine learning algorithms can analyze complex medical data and assist in early disease detection, diagnosis, and treatment plans.

Similar progress can be seen in various other industries like automotive, retail, customer service, finance, entertainment, manufacturing, agriculture, education, and environmental management.

Hence, it should not be shocking to see that AI in software testing is revolutionizing it by making it efficient and effective.

Areas in software testing where AI is used

AI is increasingly used in various software testing areas to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and coverage. Here are some key areas where AI is making a significant impact:

• Test case generation and optimization: AI can automatically generate test cases based on application usage patterns, user behavior, and other factors. It can also optimize existing test suites by identifying redundant or irrelevant tests and prioritizing those with the highest impact. Read about Risk Based Testing.
• Test execution and monitoring: AI-driven tools can execute tests, monitor their outcomes in real time, and adjust testing strategies dynamically. This includes running tests in parallel, retrying failed tests, and identifying flaky tests.
• Defect analysis and prediction: AI algorithms can analyze historical test data to predict where defects are most likely to occur in the software. This helps in focusing testing efforts on high-risk areas and improving software quality. Read a good article about defect management.
• Visual testing: AI is used in visual testing to automatically compare screenshots of web or mobile applications across different devices and browsers. It can detect visual anomalies that human testers might miss.
• Security testing: In security testing, AI helps identify vulnerabilities by analyzing code patterns and past security incidents. It can also simulate attack scenarios to test the resilience of applications.
• Code quality analysis: AI tools analyze source code to identify potential issues like code anti-patterns and suggest refactoring for better maintainability and performance. Read Maximize Your Test Script Quality: Coding Standards and Best Practices.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) for test creation: AI can interpret requirements written in natural language to generate test cases, reducing the manual effort required in test planning and design.
• Automated bug triaging: AI can assist in bug triaging by automatically categorizing, prioritizing, and assigning bugs to the appropriate development teams based on historical data and current workload. Read here how to minimize risk through early bug detection.
• Smart test data generation: AI can create test data that mimics real-world scenarios, ensuring that tests are both comprehensive and relevant. It can also ensure data privacy by generating synthetic data that resembles but does not replicate actual user data.

Tools to help incorporate AI

If you’re interested in integrating AI into your testing process with Jest, you will need to use AI-powered testing tools in conjunction with Jest. Here are a few examples that might help you get started.

GitHub’s Copilot

GitHub Copilot is essentially a virtual pair programmer that suggests whole lines or blocks of code as you type. Copilot is powered by a language model trained by OpenAI, similar to the technology behind ChatGPT, and is designed to work with a wide range of programming languages and frameworks, including JavaScript and testing frameworks like Jest.

When using Jest, a popular testing framework for JavaScript, Copilot can be particularly helpful in several ways:

• Writing test cases: Copilot can suggest test cases based on your application code. For example, if you’re writing a function, Copilot might suggest a relevant Jest test that asserts the expected behavior of that function.
• Generating mock data: It can automatically generate mock data and functions, which are commonly used in Jest for isolating the component or module being tested.
• Asserts and expectations: Copilot can help write assertions in Jest, suggesting the appropriate Jest methods and matchers based on the test context.
• Setup and teardown: It can assist in writing setup and teardown code for tests, like configuring test environments or cleaning up after tests.
• Handling edge cases: Copilot can suggest tests for edge cases you might not have considered.

testRigor

Here’s another AI-powered tool that can make your end-to-end and functional testing a piece of cake. testRigor is a cloud-based tool that comes in handy for testing applications across platforms. Being an independent tool, you need not worry about integrating it with Jest.

Let’s see how it makes testing easier.

• Small learning curve: This tool comes with a user-friendly UI that is easy to interpret and powerful enough to display the required functionalities without overcomplicating it.
• Writing test cases: testRigor allows testers to write test cases in plain English. You can even use their record-and-playback tool to capture test scenarios in plain English. It uses generative AI to create functional test cases from the description that you provide. All of this makes it easy for anyone and everyone to automate testing.
• Generating test data: testRigor has the provision for you to create test data sets that can be used for testing. Know more about data-driven testing.
• Validations library: Complex validations appear super easy thanks to testRigor’s powerful library that provides various checks for all kinds of platforms. Perform 2FA, QR code, file upload/download, geolocation, SMS, phone call, audio, video, visual, database, and many more complex tests using testRigor.
• Test across platforms: You can use testRigor to test applications across different platforms like the web, mobile, and even native desktop.
• Easy test maintenance: testRigor’s use of AI is not limited to test creation alone. It is even applicable to test maintenance as it makes for a platform that guards against flakey tests.
• Multiple integrations: If you wish to expand your testing ecosystem, integrate testRigor with the supported platforms like those meant for CI/CD, test case maintenance, issue tracking, database management, infrastructure management, and more.

If you thought that’s all that testRigor has to offer, then you’re in for a treat. Check out testRigor’s top features.

Conclusion

Using AI-powered tools along with Jest to test your code is going to make your quality assurance endeavors fruitful. You can pick and choose from the various aspects of software testing and incorporate tools that work seamlessly with your existing system. However, be sure to try out the tool before you commit and see if it satisfies your needs.

“We spent so much time on maintenance when using Selenium, and we spend nearly zero time with maintenance using testRigor.”

Keith Powe VP Of Engineering - IDT