Self-Healing

Overview

Self-healing is a functionality devised to address the challenge of identifying evolving objects as applications undergo changes. Widely available across automation frameworks, this feature essentially automates the process of maintaining automation scripts with ease. Tools equipped with self-healing capabilities can recognize modifications in object properties and autonomously adapt by incorporating new attributes, ensuring the continued functionality of designed test cases.

In an environment marked by rapid product releases and updates, test scripts often bear the brunt of frequent changes, necessitating ongoing maintenance by testers. This task, daunting for both manual and automation testers, involves revisiting old scripts and updating object properties— a particularly arduous undertaking given the prevalence of Agile development practices.

How Self-Healing Works

Once an element is successfully identified on a page source, its pathway is stored for future reference. If the same element is subsequently sought but cannot be found, the system assesses the current page and devises new locator strategies for altered elements based on prior benchmarks.

In certain scenarios, elements may alter their locators due to updates in their build. Nonetheless, the self-healing feature can autonomously detect these new locators and seamlessly continue the test execution process.

Limitations

• Non-rеcovеrablе errors
  Self-healing capabilities are limited to recovering from specific types of errors, such as WebDriver initialization issues or system-level failures.​

• Tеst accuracy
  Self-Healing will surely help with test maintenance. However, it might disguise real issues within your application or scripts. It is vital that you examine the logs and comprehend the reasons behind the necessity for healing a test. ​

• Pеrformancе impact
  Enabling Self-Healing might reduce the speed of test execution time due to additional checks and workflows to your scripts. It even enhances your test suite for the better, however, it is unable to assist in provide a good test design or error handling practices.

​How to use in pCloudy

Utilize the provided link to establish a remote WebDriver connection within the pCloudy platform : https://device.pcloudy.com/healenium/wd/hub