Acceptance testing/Contributing automated tests

There are a list of Moodle functionality tests have we have run manually before each major release, known as MDLQA tests.

We are aiming to automate as many of these as we can using Moodle's new behat-based testing framework.

To help us automate any of the MDLQA tests, follow these steps:

1. Check the list of critical features in the MDLQA project
2. Choose one of the listed MDLQA issues to convert it to an automated test, the issues are prioritized using the Blocker, Critical, Major, Minor, Trivial scale
   • Choose a Blocker issue https://tracker.moodle.org/issues/?jql=parent%20%3D%20%4DDLQA-1%20and%20priority%20%3D%20Blocker
   • When all Blocker issues are converted we can begin with the Critical ones https://tracker.moodle.org/issues/?jql=parent%20%3D%20%4DDLQA-1%20and%20priority%20%3D%20Critical
   • When all Critical issues are converted we can begin with the Major ones https://tracker.moodle.org/issues/?jql=parent%20%3D%20%4DDLQA-1%20and%20priority%20%3D%20Major
   • MDLQA issues with priority Minor and Trivial can be hard or not possible to automate as they require integration with other systems, codebase modifications or other actions outside the browser scope.
3. Fill a new issue in MDL project
   • Description: Automate MDLQA-NNNN - I'm the MDLQA description
   • Component 'Automated functional tests' and the MDLQA component
   • Add a will help resolve link to the MDLQA-NNNN
4. Follow the process to add new features or new scenarios to existing features
   • Check the affected components current list of behat features (COMPONENTNAME/tests/behat/) to see if any of them already includes the MDLQA tests or can be slightly modified to include it
   • https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Acceptance_testing#Writing_features
   • Use the check list to discard basic issues when writing tests (https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Acceptance_testing#Features_check_list)
   • Add new step definitions in case there are repeated blocks of steps (https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Acceptance_testing#Adding_steps_definitions)
   • Feature files and changes in them should be backported as much as possible
   • Include MDLQA-NNNN and short description of what is being automated to the commit message/s where the .feature files are added/edited