{"id":23301,"date":"2020-06-27T10:30:21","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T10:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/?p=23301"},"modified":"2025-05-17T06:21:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T06:21:58","slug":"what-is-a-flaky-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/what-is-a-flaky-test\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a flaky test?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What is a flaky test?<\/h2>\n<p>A flaky test is a test in software automation that gives inconsistent results on different runs, even when the code being tested has not changed. Flaky tests can be unreliable and difficult to debug, often causing confusion and delays in the development process.<\/p>\n<h2>How to avoid it?<\/h2>\n<p>Good test synchronization techniques and a good environment avoid flaky tests during automation test runs.\u00a0Poor synchronization in your tests may make your test result<br \/>\noscillate between Pass and Fail criteria, resulting in flaky tests. To avoid this, you should synchronize your tests.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-23307 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-content\/uploads\/Flaky-Tests.png\" alt=\"Flaky Test\" width=\"1258\" height=\"686\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-content\/uploads\/Flaky-Tests.png 1258w, https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-content\/uploads\/Flaky-Tests-300x164.png 300w, https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-content\/uploads\/Flaky-Tests-1024x558.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-content\/uploads\/Flaky-Tests-768x419.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1258px) 100vw, 1258px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Strategies to avoid flaky tests are as follows:<\/p>\n<p>Isolate Tests<br \/>\nTest Synchronization<br \/>\nMock Dependencies<br \/>\nConsistent Test Environment<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Isolate Tests<\/strong>: Ensure that each test case is independent of others. Avoid dependencies on shared resources that can be affected by other tests or external factors. Execute tests individually and in isolation from other tests to pinpoint which tests are causing issues when they fail unexpectedly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Test Synchronization<\/strong>: When testing asynchronous behavior (like AJAX calls or timeouts), use explicit waits rather than arbitrary sleep times. This ensures tests wait only as long as necessary and proceed promptly when conditions are met.\u00a0Avoid timing issues like race conditions or UI rendering delays.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mock Dependencies<\/strong>: Use mocking frameworks to simulate external dependencies like APIs or databases in a controlled manner.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Test Environment:<\/strong> Ensure that test environments like staging, UAT, and production are consistent and reflect the production environment as closely as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is a flaky test? :<br \/>\nA flaky test is a test in software automation that gives inconsistent results on different runs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-testing-questions","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23301"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27401,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23301\/revisions\/27401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.testingdocs.com\/questions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}