Introduction:
Katalon Studio is an automation testing solution developed by Katalon LLC. The software is built on top of the open-source automation frameworks Selenium, Appium with a specialized IDE interface for web, API, mobile and desktop application testing. Its initial release for internal use was in January 2015.
Katalon Studio is a free test automation tool for automating websites, mobile applications, and web services. It has record & playback and manual mode that help non-programmers to effectively create automation test cases. For users with programming expertise, it has script mode as well using which users can write test scripts in Groovy.
Features of Katalon Studio
- It can be used to automate, web applications, mobile applications as well as web services.
- It is free tool by KMS technology (free but not open source).
- It provides record and play back capability.
- It can be integrated with Git, Jenkins, qTest and Jira.
- It provides in-built templates for maintaining the object repository, test cases and custom keywords.
- It supports Java and Groovy language.
Advantages of Katalon Studio
- Its setup and installation is very simple, you just need to download the respective package based on your OS from Katalon Studio Official website, extract it and then activate it using your credentials.
- Katalon caters to the need of non-programmers by providing record & playback feature and scripting in manual mode for test case creation. Along with that it has a relatively simpler learning curve which helps manual tester to easily create automation tests.
- For those who have good programming expertise, Katalon provides test case creation in scripting mode also.
- The in-built templates, frameworks, integration to Jira, Git, Jenkins etc. features help in speeding up the test case creation time. User must focus on automation of the test scripts.
- The script recorded in one browser can be made to run in any of the supported browsers, making cross browser testing fast and easy.
- Its test result reports are graphically intuitive and can be exported to pdf and CSV formats.
- It provides inherent logging mechanism and screenshot on failure feature.
A quick guide to set up and start your first automation test with Katalon Studio, a free test automation tool built on top of Selenium and Appium. You now can begin automation testing on web & mobile with the least amount of effort.
System requirements
| Requirement | |
| Operating System | Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, macOS 10.11+, Linux (Ubuntu based) |
| CPU | Minimum: 2 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor |
| Memory | Katalon Studio Minimum: 2 GB RAM (32-bit) or 4 GB RAM (64-bit) Recommended: 4 GB RAM (32-bit) or 8 GB RAM (64-bit). Katalon Runtime Engine Minimum: 2 GB RAM (32-bit) or 4 GB RAM (64-bit) Recommendation for concurrent executions (and execution with Docker): the number of concurrent sessions x 2GB. Example: Recommended RAM for 3 concurrent execution sessions is 6GB (3 x 2GB). |
| Hard Drive | At least 1 GB available hard disk space. Extra disk space is required depending on project source codes and generated execution reports. |
Browsers
| Desktop Browsers | Version on Windows | Version on macOS | Note |
| Internet Explorer | 9, 10, 11 | N/A | Required IE configurations: Internet Explorer Configurations. |
| Microsoft Edge | 18 | N/A | |
| Microsoft Edge (Chromium) | 80+ | 80+ | Supported in Katalon Studio version 7.3+ |
| Firefox | 56+ | 56+ | To use Firefox 57 with Katalon Studio, please use Katalon Studio v5.1+ |
| Google Chrome | 58+ | 58+ | |
| Opera | N/A | N/A | |
| Safari | N/A | 12+ |
Download Procedure
Katalon Studio is available for free, supporting both Windows and Mac. Visit Katalon Studio website to download the latest version.(https://www.katalon.com)
Once you launch above URL, click on download now
After clicking on download now, it will navigate to Register page. Enter required details and Sign in.
Once you started, you can select the OS and click on download.
Installation Procedure
For Window
To start Katalon Studio, double-click on the katalon.exe
For MacOS
Katalon Studio (macOS) file in the directory where you unpack Katalon Studio.
If you currently use macOS Catalina, you have to enable Katalon Studio and Katalon Studio Engine applications in System Preferences/ Security & Privacy/ General.
Once started, the application should display a splash screen.
License Activation
Starting from version 7.0.0, you need a license to activate and use one of the Katalon Studio products, including Katalon Studio Enterprise (KSE), Katalon Studio (KS), and Katalon Runtime Engine (KRE).
After launching Katalon Studio, provide your registered username and password to activate your Katalon Studio Instance. The username and password are the ones used to login to https://www.katalon.com.
Below is the home screen of katalon studio
Create a new Project
- Enter the name of your new project and the location to store the project data on your machine. Click OK.
- A new project will be generated at specified location.
File–>New–> Project
Enter your Project name
Create your first Test Case
- Select option to create New Test Casefrom the main Toolbar.
Test Case –> New–> Test Case
Provide the name for your test case then click OK.
A new test case will be created accordingly. The test case editor is also displayed for editing.
You can compose the test case by recording, scripting or manually entering test steps. For now, let’s quickly generate the test script using Record feature. Click on the Record icon from the main Toolbar.
While recording, actions performed on the browser will be captured and generated into test steps.
Specify the target browser to be launched by selecting from the Record dropdown list.
Enter a URL
Your selected browser will be launched. Navigate to your website, then hover the mouse cursor over the web object to be captured.
The web object will be highlighted with a red border. An overlay pane will also be displayed at the edge of the screen to show relevant xpath info.
Click stop of Record dialog when you finish recording.
By clicking on show captured objects, you can check the objects properties
Select the object in the Captured Objects tree, its details will be displayed in the Object Properties section.
The method which Katalon Studio will be using to detect web elements.
Attributes – Katalon Studio automatically generate an XPath combine with objects’ properties
XPath – Katalon Studio Relative XPath. If an element cannot be consistently located using its direct attributes, Katalon Studio will identify by using its more robust neighbours.
CSS – Users are allowed to input CSS selector manually into Object Detect Editor.
Click Verify and Highlight to make sure the object can be located by Katalon Studio.
If there is a web object with matched Selector Editor value, it will be highlighted red in opened browser and message “Found X element using XPath Selector” will be displayed.
Click on Save to add those objects to Object Repository.
Check on those captured objects in the left pane that you would like to save into Katalon Studio.
The structure of your Object Repository is displayed on the right pane. Select the folder to add the captured objects into. Click OK when done.
Captured actions and objects are generated in Katalon Studio.
Execution
Execution comes with seeing execution logs and, in many cases, you only want to execute some steps. New features have been introduced to prevent having to execute all steps:
Logs: a real-time execution raw logs when you execute test steps.
Run (with three types of run):
-
- Run all steps
- Debug: Run selected steps
- Debug: Run from selected step
Note: You need a Katalon Studio Enterprise license to use this debugging feature in Katalon version 7.1+.
-
- Run All: Execute ALL steps that are enabled on Web Recorder.
- Debug: Run selected steps: Execute only one or many selected steps.
- Debug: Run from selected steps: Execute the current selected step and all steps after selected one
Here is the summary of what Katalon Studio can do to address the limitation of Selenium
- Can eliminate the need for user-defined frameworks and expensive programmers to build test automation.
- Can create test scenarios that accurately simulate real business workflows much faster & simpler.
- Can Create, Manage and Use test data securely with ease
- Can easily automate Web Apps, Mobile Apps, Web APIs without programming skill.
- Can execute test scripts in parallel and cross browsers without programming skills.
- Empower your Agile Teams with Continuous Testing by Continuous Integration.
- Simulate complex test workflows easily with looping, conditional statements, and control flow commands with built-in keywords.
- Can easily automate dynamic UI & frequently changing content with ease.
- For programming lovers, Katalon Studio allows us to code to achieve complex functionality using Script Mode.
- KatalonStudio eliminates need for wait statements even for inconsistent page loads and AJAX with its built-in keywords for synchronization.