How MTA 3.0 eliminates fragile frontend tests

The MTA 3.0 solution for robust locators

Instead of scanning the generated HTML in the page and building a page object model from this, manually or assisted by AI, MTA 3.0 uses the page structure and widgets from the Mendix model to create highly reliable locators. This approach ensures that the locators always correspond to the underlying Mendix model and makes the use and updates for these locators as easy as possible. How does MTA 3.0 do this?

• MTA generates locators directly from the widgets in the Mendix model. Generated locators, based on the Mendix model structure, are a robust alternative for data-test-id locators, because they are generated by the Mendix platform and identical for all widgets of the same widget type. MTA supports all standard Mendix platform supported widgets and is extensible with your own custom built Mendix pluggable widgets.
• MTA can test the conditional visibility of widgets: by setting users (user role) and test data (data driven testing) MTA is capable of asserting whether a widget should be visible or not and therefore it can test the conditional visibility of widgets of your Mendix app
• MTA distincts locatable and non-locatable widgets: MTA intelligently identifies which widgets within your page structure are reliably locatable and which are not.
• MTA provides visual feedback for ambiguous Locators: To aid testers, MTA provides visual feedback for widgets that might have more than one potential locator, guiding them to choose the most robust option.
• MTA provides a Mendix widget inspector: By utilizing the Mendix Widget Inspector (available for Chrome and Firefox), MTA can detect visible widgets, their unique names, and their multiplicity on a specific page.
• MTA detects the structure of nested widgets: MTA leverages page structure and widget types to detect nested widgets that require a more advanced and resilient locator strategy.

Conclusion: MTA 3.0 eliminates fragile frontend tests 

With MTA 3.0, you can create robust frontend tests using locators generated directly from the Mendix model. These locators are easy to maintain and ensure that your tests consistently find the correct element on your Mendix page for actions or assertions. Furthermore, MTA automatically heals tests when widget names are altered or widgets are removed from the page. In future releases, MTA will also self-heal locators for nested widgets whose nesting structure has changed.