frontend test vs backend test

Frontend Testing vs Backend Testing: What’s the Difference?

An application can broadly be divided into two categories: frontend and backend. Before releasing a product in the market, it’s essential to test whether both the frontend and backend of the application are working correctly. Frontend testing is the testing of the user interface visible to the user by which users interact with the application. In contrast, backend testing is about testing the actual database and server logic under the hood, which is not visible to the application users.

In this article, you will learn about fronted and backend testing and the difference between both tests. You will also learn about the various tools and techniques used in frontend and backend testing.

What is Frontend Testing?

The frontend of an application is the visual appearance and user interface that users see and use to interact with the application’s features and functionality. In the testing life cycle, frontend testing is the process of testing the frontend side of the application to ensure there are no any glitch, functionality breaks, or significant problems present in the application.

A well-driven frontend testing makes your product bug free and ensures the user will get a great user experience.

Frontend and backend overview

What are the types of frontend testing

In frontend testing, different types of testing methods participate in different layers of testing; for example- unit testing is performed in the initial phase of software development of the life cycle, then component testing and integration testing are done.

That to say, frontend testing of an application involves performing various types of testing on the subject application; some of the frequently performed test types are listed below:

Unit Testing: Unit testing is the process of testing the individual units of software, i.e., a function, module, method, or class, in isolation. It helps to catch the bug issue early in the development and reduces the cost. It also enables code reusability. You can migrate both your code and test into a new project quickly.

Integration Testing: Integration testing is the process of ensuring the integration of two more units and interface links between them are working correctly. For example- testing whether or not I can see my Gmail home page by signing in on the login page of Gmail, here login page and Gmail home page are both individual units, and I am testing their integration.

Regression testing: Regression testing is continuous testing to ensure that newly added functionality is working correctly without affecting other functionality in the application. It helps to ensure that a newly added functionality will not introduce any possible bug issues.

System testing: System testing validates the working of whole integrated software at different layers. It involves the combination of various other tests like usability testing, load testing, software, hardware testing, etc. System testing is black box testing that involves testing the software from the user’s perspective.

How to Create a Frontend Testing Plan?

Before creating a frontend testing plan, you should ask why creating a frontend testing plan is essential.

Creating a frontend testing plan is very important at the beginning of your front-end testing journey. During the testing journey, you will have to check various application features and functionality that require writing nested and complex test cases. A frontend testing plan should be made to ensure you create the required test case to cover the application’s frontend.

A testing plan is nothing but planning at the beginning of your testing cycle. Generally, a testing plan is created per the project requirement, but some actions in the testing plan are everywhere. When creating a frontend test plan, you should remember the following points:

  • Application workflow: Before testing an application, you should understand it and how it works. So, make sure before the testing you use the application yourself and understand the application workflow from the user’s point of view. That will help you create the test cases and write test steps later.
  • Application users: Nowadays, an application is available across all devices. A user can access an application in a browser by navigating to the URL or can download it as an application. When you know the application user, you can run your test cases test lab by selecting the combinations of devices the user is using.
  • Create a checklist: After learning about the application workflow and user, create a list of actions you will take during the front end. This checklist will keep you accountable for the test cases you have made and ensure you do not forget them in a rush.
  • Select your tools: The selection of tools is essential in the testing plan. If you select the wrong tool, the whole software development life cycle will slow down, so be careful when choosing a testing tool for your front-end testing.

As we have seen above, selecting a good tool is essential in testing; let’s discuss some of the capable, flexible, and powerful tools in the market that can help with your application frontend testing.

What are some frontend Testing Tools?

There are two types of testing tools: the developer-focused tool, and the low code no code tools that require little or no coding knowledge. If you are not from a developer background or have little understanding of coding, choose no code low code GUI(graphical user interface) based tools for the frontend testing.

There are too many available tools in the market, and I am listing down below some of the best, which are capable and powerful enough automation tools:

  • Testsigma: Testsigma is an open-source and cloud-based AI-driven test automation tool. It provides NLP’s written in plain English to write test steps, or you can also use the test step recorder using the Testsigma extension. The cloud version also supports test labs, and you can run your test cases on various devices by selecting a combination of devices and browsers in the test lab. Testsigma is a no-code test automation tool, meaning, by using it, you can perform end-to-end testing even if you have never written a single line of code.
  • Selenium: Selenium is an open-source project introduced early in the software testing age. Selenium is an umbrella project providing various tools and libraries which enable browser test automation. Selenium WebDriver is a language-independent protocol that helps to instruct the browser’s behavior. Selenium also provides an add-on to record the user interaction with the browser named Selenium IDE. Selenium is not a no-code tool; to use Selenium, one requires a developer background.
  • Appium: Appium is an open-source test automation framework used to test native, hybrid, and mobile web apps. Appium uses the same API to write the test cases in test cases on android, ios, and windows, which means you don’t have to write the different test cases for other devices. Using Appium also requires the developer’s background or knowledge of javascript.
  • OpenTest: OpenTest is a free and open-source test automation framework for web applications, mobile apps, and APIs. OpenTest is a low-code, no-code tool for scalable and extensible test automation. OpenTest is a feature-rich automation framework focused on enabling modern test automation practices.
  • Watir: Watir stands for web automation testing in ruby; it’s a lightweight and open-source web automation testing tool. It provides support for various web browsers and elements and advanced interaction functionality with the browser, like, browser certificate, proxies, cookies, etc.

What is Back-end Testing?

Backend testing is white box testing. It ensures an application’s database and server-side functionality are working as intended. For example, testing whether a user can log in after signing in will come under the backend testing.

Backend testing types

These are the following types of testing done in the backend testing:

  • Structural testing: Structural testing ensure that all the database elements are mainly responsible for storing the data. Types of Structural testing are: schema testing, table testing, column testing, trigger testing, and database server validation testing.
  • Functional testing: Functional testing ensures the application functionality works together with the database properly.
  • Non-functional testing: Non-functional testing measures the stress and load over the database, which helps to optimize database and application performance. Types of non-functional testing are stress testing and load testing.

How to Create the back end testing plan?

A test plan reminds you to run the all-important test operations and ensure you do not forget to run any test. These are some points that you should keep in your mind creating a backend testing plan:

  • Backend language: Unlike the frontend, you will not have any graphical user interface(GUI). That’s why you should know and understand the language used in the backend to perform any testing.
  • Database: You should have a level of understanding of the database to perform various testing like schema testing, table, and column testing, trigger testing, etc.
  • Create a checklist: Create a list of test cases and functionality for which you will write test cases during the testing process of the application backend.
  • Select your tools: Select a good tool that will ease the overall testing process in the test development life cycle.

What are the backend Testing Tools?

Tools are abundant in the market, but these are some best ones out there to test your application backend:

Testsigma: Testsigma is an open-source and cloud-based test automation tool; by using it, you can test the front end as well as the back end of your application. You can perform various backend testing like structure, functional, and non-functional testing.

Data Factory: You can use the Data factory to create an automated workflow to perform data-driven test cases using your database as a data source. It provides a programmatic UI for ease of testing.

Data Generator: Using Data Generator, you can generate any data row and schema objects per your backend testing requirement.

TurboData: TurboData helps to generate test data with foreign keys and select, update and delete SQL commands.

Frontend Testing vs Backend Testing – Differences

The primary difference between Frontend Testing and Backend Testing is that frontend testing checks the user interface of application whereas backend testing checks the database and server side of application.

Here’s a table depicting key differences between frontend testing and backend testing:

Frontend testing Backend testing
Frontend testing is about testing the user interface of an application that the user sees and interacts with. Backend testing is about testing the database and server side of an application and ensuring that it’s working properly.
Frontend testing is black box testing, meaning the tester will not be able to see the code logic behind the user interface and functionality. Backend testing is white-box testing, meaning the tester will interact with the code logic behind any functionality.
Frontend testing doesn’t require any knowledge of programming language. Backend testing required knowledge of the database and the language used in the backend.

Summary

To ensure an application’s overall functionality of an application, it’s important to test both the backend and frontend sides of an application. Frontend testing ensures that an application’s overall functionality works as intended in all operating systems and browser combinations. Whereas backed testing ensures the database side of the application is working properly.

FAQ

What is the difference between front end testing and backend testing?

Frontend testing is performed to ensure that the user interface of an application is working as intended. In contrast, backend testing is performed to ensure that the database side of the application is working correctly.

What is backend testing?

Backend testing is white box testing, meaning code logic is visible to the tester in this testing. It is performed to ensure that an application’s database and server-side functionality is working correctly. Backend testing requires knowledge of coding and database.

What is the front end testing?

Frontend testing is black box testing, meaning the tester will not be able to look into the code logic behind the user interface. It is performed to ensure that an application is working correctly in all combinations of operating systems and browsers. Frontend testing doesn’t require any knowledge of coding.


Test automation made easy

Start your smart continuous testing journey today with Testsigma.

SHARE THIS BLOG

RELATED POSTS


Power of POC in Testing: Your Exclusive Guide to Success
Power of POC in Testing: Your Exclusive Guide to Success
Sitecore Automated Testing What it is and How to Perform
Sitecore Automated Testing | What it is and How to Perform?
Software Testing Tools_banner image
Retail Application Testing | What it is & Why it’s Necessary?