Come for answers. Stay for best practices. All we’re missing is you.
As applications grow in complexity, relying solely on end-to-end UI tests can lead to brittle, slow, and hard-to-maintain test suites. The solution? Decoupling the UI and service layers in your test automation strategy. Automating test cases that interact with internal APIs while decoupling the service and UI layers is a powerful approach to building scalable and maintainable test frameworks.
UI tests are great for validating user journeys, but they come with challenges:
Flaky tests due to UI rendering or timing issues
Slow execution times
Complex debugging when failures occur
UI tests are notoriously flaky due to changes in layout, timing issues, and browser inconsistencies. By testing business logic and data flows at the service layer, you reduce reliance on the UI and gain more stable, reliable tests.
Faster Feedback Loops
Service-level tests execute much faster than UI tests. Decoupling allows you to validate core functionality quickly without waiting for the UI to load or render.
Better Isolation of Failures
When a test fails, it's easier to pinpoint the issue if the UI and service layers are tested independently. This isolation helps teams debug faster and more effectively.
Enhanced Maintainability
Changes in the UI (e.g., button renaming or layout shifts) won’t break your service-level tests. This reduces the maintenance burden and allows teams to evolve the UI without fear of breaking core functionality tests.
A typical web application consists of:
UI Layer: Frontend components (React, Angular, etc.)
Service Layer: Internal APIs that handle business logic
Backend Layer: Databases, external services, etc.
Instead of testing through the UI, we target the internal APIs directly. This allows us to validate core functionality without relying on the UI.
While our approach emphasises decoupling the service and UI layers, it's important to clarify that we are not eliminating UI testing. Instead, we are strategically separating concerns to improve test efficiency and maintainability.
By testing internal APIs independently, we gain:
Faster feedback loops
More stable and focused test cases
Easier debugging of service-level issues
However, UI testing remains essential for validating:
User experience and visual elements
End-to-end workflows from a user's perspective
Integration between frontend and backend components
Our framework allows us to run UI and service tests independently or together, depending on the scenario. For example:
Service Test: Create a user via API
UI Test: Log in as that user and verify dashboard elements
This layered approach ensures we maintain comprehensive coverage without compromising on speed or reliability.
✅ In short: We’ve decoupled the layers to test them more effectively—but we haven’t suppressed or replaced UI testing. We still run full end-to-end tests where it makes sense.
Unit Tests: Handled by developers to validate individual functions and modules.
Service/API Tests: Automated using Robot Framework and REST API calls to test internal services independently of the UI.
UI Tests: Still part of our strategy,but limited to critical end-to-end flows to ensure the user interface behaves as expected.
This layered approach ensures we test the right things at the right level, reducing redundancy and increasing confidence in our releases.
Robot Framework is a keyword-driven test automation framework that’s widely used for acceptance testing and robotic process automation (RPA). It’s highly extensible and supports REST API testing through libraries like:
RequestsLibrary
RESTinstance
HttpLibrary.HTTP
Instead of interacting with the UI (which can be slow and flaky), Robot Framework directly calls internal APIs to:
Create test scenarios
Trigger workflows
Validate business logic
Simulate user actions
This allows you to test the core functionality without relying on the frontend.
Here’s a simplified example in RobotFramework -
Decoupling the UI and service layers in your test automation strategy is a game-changer. By focusing on internal API testing, you gain speed, reliability, and clarity—making your test suite a true enabler of quality and agility.
Start small, iterate often, and watch your test automation evolve into a powerful asset for your team.
Copy
By
Teena Babu
posted