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The Success Story of CreatorStack

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Success Story

The Success Story of CreatorStack​

Revolutionising Flutter Mobile App Development: “The Success Story of CreatorStack’s Test Automation Journey”​

According to Nachiketas Ramanujam, CEO of CreatorStack, TestVagrant is an ideal testing partner for a product company. They delivered exceptional results by creating an integration test automation framework for our Flutter mobile app from the ground up. Their implementation of clean coding principles and guidelines was truly remarkable. By integrating the tests with Google Firebase Test Lab, they drastically reduced the need for manual testing. In addition, the team optimized and streamlined our testing processes that supported fast and highly efficient shipping. Their team was also acted more like an extension to our team by communicating effectively and proactively.

Client

CreatorStack is a social networking platform which brings together Creators and Fans. The company provides a platform for online streaming and content creation that empowers creators to take control of their growth, become self-sufficient, and avoid being exploited by social media platforms. This helps clients build their brands and access new and existing revenue streams.

The platform offers a variety of features, including fundraising, auctions, exclusive content, live streaming, posting, challenges, creating hype links, and minting coins, and has a subscription model.

Context

Our starting point was a huge un-curated manual test suite. There was no dedicated testing team, testing-related best processes and comprehensive strategy for test automation. Also, there was a constant rush to release the apps faster.

CreatorStack

There was a need for an overhaul of the testing thought process, test automation and best practices aligning with Flutter app development.

Challenges

  • Choosing the right test automation tool and ecosystem: Given Flutter is relatively new, choosing the right tools and techniques to succeed is crucial.
  • Continuous Integration & Test Infrastructure: Once we develop tests leveraging them on the supported platforms on a cloud device provider to enable continuous integration.
  • Test Reporting: The standard test reporting applications are yet to support Flutter. Generating consumable HTML reporting was a challenge
  • Views other than Flutter: The Android and iOS applications had native views and webviews along with Flutter views.
  • Inclusive test automation: For development teams that move fast, need the fastest feedback possible for their changes. The test assets must be close to the development teams and not a stage in software development.

Goals/Solutions Achieved

  • Selection of tool: We started with Appium, however, faced challenges related to identifying and interacting with widgets. We moved to flutter integration tests to overcome these challenges with flying colours.
  • Stable and Reliable Test automation suite: Built a framework keeping all the common pitfalls of test automation in mind. Including but not limited to the Locator strategy, Wait strategy, Re-usable abstractions, Clean coding principles, and consumable HTML reporting.
  • Embracing native views and webviews: The framework was designed to handle native views and elements along with web views, so that test can seamlessly navigate along the various views of the application
  • Continuous Integration & Test Infrastructure: Enabled continuous integration and continuous testing by integrating the tests with Google Firebase Test Lab
  • Inclusive automation: Embraced the development team with test automation by means of a Gray-Box testing approach using flutter integration tests. This allows the entire engineering team to add, modify and manage the test automation suite on their own.

Impact

A stable, reliable end-to-end test automation framework with maximum test coverage. Reduced manual testing efforts and release cycle times. Established test automation artefacts as a trusted team asset, that delivers value on each test execution.

Reach out to us in case you are exploring a testing partner for your app!

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