I’m using Google Docs to share test data. That way test data (accounts, purchases etc.) can be set up in advance and test execution can be done using the pre-created data. It saves a lot of time and streamlines the testing effort.

When executing a test, a tester can just go to the google doc and get a test account already configured with the proper data for the scenario they are testing. This can also extend to automation with one extra step.

The test automation I’ve written in C# originally was written for a single scenario. After some refactoring, I had data driven test cases in NUnit. This is simple to accomplish with an annotation. The original test might look something like this:

using System;
using NUnit.Framework;

[TestFixture]
namespace oneshore.qa.testfixtures
{
    public class MyTest
    {
        [TestCase]
        public void testSanity()
        {
            Assert.IsTrue(Sky.color == Colors.BLUE);
        }
    }
}

By adding parameters to the [TestCase] attribute we can come up with a (slightly) data driven test:

        [TestCase(Color.BLUE, Result=true)]
        [TestCase(Color.GREEN, Result=false)]
        [TestCase(Color.RED, Result = false)]
        public bool testSanity(Color expectedColor)
        {
            return Sky.color == expectedColor;
        }

You can also specify a data source method with the TestCaseSource attribute:

       [TestCaseSource("MyDataMethod")]
        public void testInsanity(Color unexpectedColor)
        {
            if (unexpectedColor != Color.BLUE)
                Assert.IsFalse(Sky.color == unexpectedColor);
        }

        private IEnumerable<Color> MyDataMethod()
        {
            List<Color> colors = new List<Color>{Color.BLUE, Color.GREEN, Color.RED};
            
            foreach (Color color in colors)
                yield return color;
        }

It’s now a fairly simple exercise to get your test data from a file. And just one more step to use the Google Data API to get it from a spreadsheet. I’ll detail that next.