Following are few of Applitools' basic terms, including embedded links to detailed Knowledge Base articles, that will help you get started automating your visual tests:
- Baseline - a baseline is defined by the following parameters - test name (3rd parameter in eyes.open), application name (2nd parameter in eyes.open), viewport size (4th parameter in eyes.open) and the environment that was used to run the test (OS/device and browser). You can override the environment parameters using eyes.setBaselineName, and when you set a fixed baseline name, the results will be compared based on the first 3 parameters without taking the environment into consideration. The baseline parameters define what a test run should be diffed against.
- Batch - the name of the batch is defined in eyes.setBatch, and batches in general are only used to aggregate several test results under the same container (folder) in the test results dashboard. Batch name does not affect the baseline in any way.
- Test name - 3rd parameter in eyes.open and refers to the logical test name. The test name is one of the unique baseline parameters (changing the test name will result in a new baseline). The test name appear below the application name in the test results dashboard.
- Application name - 2nd parameter in eyes.open and represents the logical name of the application under test (same behavior as test name).
- Step - Every test can contain multiple steps. The number of steps in a test will be similar to the number of checkWindow calls. The way steps from the baseline run and actual run are aligned is based on the following logic:
- If all the steps in the baseline and actual result have unique (and matching) tag names (the parameter for checkWindow is the step tag name), then the steps will be aligned based on the tag names.
- If there are unique tag names, but the names are not matching, this can imply that there are some redundant or missing steps in the actual run and these steps will not have actual result or expected result.
- If there are no unique names (or no names at all), at the end of the test when calling eyes.close, there is an auto alignment algorithm that will find the best alignment between the baseline and actual images and will compare the images based on the optimal alignment.