QA Test Automation (Web and API)
Manual testers ready to automate, and developers who want reliable automated tests. You should know testing basics and be comfortable reading simple code.
- QA and software testing
- Intermediate
- 8 days, or 16 half-day sessions
- Instructor-led cohort · In-house for your team · Online, live
What you will be able to do
- Decide which tests are worth automating, and which are cheaper to keep manual.
- Write maintainable browser tests in TypeScript with Playwright, using page objects and stable locators.
- Test REST APIs in Postman and in code, including authentication, error cases and response contracts.
- Set up test data and environments so that tests give the same result every time.
- Run your test suite automatically on every change in a CI pipeline, and read the results.
- Diagnose flaky tests and fix their causes instead of adding retries.
Automation the team can trust
A test suite is only useful if people believe its results. Many teams start automating, end up with slow, flaky tests nobody trusts, and go back to clicking through every release by hand.
This course teaches the habits that keep a suite reliable: stable locators, independent tests, clean test data and a pipeline that runs on every change.
How it is taught
You build one test suite across the course, against a sample application with a web front end and a REST API. Each module adds to it. By the end you have a working suite in a Git repository that runs in CI, which you can show to an employer or adapt at work.
We teach with Playwright, Postman and TypeScript because they are widely used and free to start with. The ideas carry over to other tools.
Before this course you should be comfortable with the material in QA Manual Testing Foundations.
Syllabus
Automation strategy
- The test pyramid and where automation pays off
- Choosing what to automate first
- The tools used on the course, and how to judge others
Programming for testers
- TypeScript essentials, from variables and functions to async and await
- Git basics for working in a shared test repository
- Reading and debugging code with an editor and the browser developer tools
Browser automation with Playwright
- Locators that survive design changes
- Assertions, waiting and auto-retrying expectations
- Forms, file uploads, tables and multi-page journeys
Designing a maintainable test suite
- Page objects and reusable fixtures
- Data-driven tests
- Naming, structure and code review for test code
API testing
- HTTP, REST and JSON from a tester's point of view
- Exploring and testing APIs in Postman, with collections and environments
- API tests in code, including authentication tokens and negative cases
- Testing a payment flow against a mobile-money sandbox and its callbacks
Test data and environments
- Creating and cleaning up test data through APIs
- Configuration for test, staging and production-like environments
- Keeping passwords and keys out of the test code
Continuous integration
- Running tests in a CI pipeline on every pull request
- Reports, traces and screenshots for failed tests
- Parallel runs and keeping the suite fast
Flaky tests and quality signals
- Common causes of flaky tests and how to remove them
- Basic automated accessibility checks
- Reporting automation results to the team and to managers
Assessment and certificate
- A practical project: you automate a set of browser and API tests for a sample application, run them in a CI pipeline and walk an assessor through your design choices.
- Deefrent Academy certificate, awarded on passing the course assessment.
- Ask for dates and fees. Tell us the course and the format you prefer, and we reply with the next dates and the fee.
Training a whole team?
This course can run privately for your organisation, at your premises or online, with examples drawn from your own systems.
Ready to join the next cohort?
Tell us how you would like to attend. We reply with the next dates, the fee and what you need before you start.