Pagination, the division of content across multiple numbered pages, is a standard feature on almost every content-rich website. At first glance, testing it seems simple: just click from one page to the next. But for one of our clients, the devil was in the details. The user interface only ever showed the user a small subset of the available pages—for example, pages 1 through 5, followed by an "..." symbol. The actual total number of pages was not directly readable anywhere on the page. This presented a significant, almost insurmountable hurdle for comprehensive and automated testing.

A manual tester would face a tedious task: They would first have to painstakingly and blindly click their way to the very last page, just to determine the total number, before they could even begin the actual content validation. A simple automated test would fail miserably at this hurdle. How is it supposed to define a loop that iterates through "all pages" when it doesn't know the end condition—the last page? A solution was therefore needed that could handle this complex navigation logic while simultaneously verifying the structural integrity of the content on every single page.

Our mission was to develop an intelligent test that could master this challenge: first, to reliably determine the unknown number of pages on its own, and then to perform a seamless validation of all pages.

Our approach was an intelligent, two-stage process that first analyzes how the pagination works before systematically validating it.

The first phase is the discovery phase, a kind of digital reconnaissance mission. Instead of simply guessing or giving up, we taught the test to determine the total page count independently and precisely. The test starts on page 1 and systematically clicks through the visible page numbers, for example, from 1 to 5. It then recognizes the "Next" or "..." element and clicks on it to load the next block of page numbers, such as pages 6 to 10. This process is intelligently repeated until the test identifies the last available page number in the user interface. This highest discovered value is then stored as the total number of pages to be tested. The unknown is now known.

Once the exact number of pages has been determined, the second phase begins: the seamless validation phase. Now that the goal is clear, the actual, systematic quality test begins. The test navigates back to page 1 and then iterates through every single page in a precise loop, from page 1 to the final page identified in Phase 1. On each of these pages, a quick but crucial structural check is performed: Are all images visible and loaded correctly? Are all article headlines or product names present? Are critical interaction elements like "Buy" or "Read" buttons present and functional?

What's important here is the deliberate strategic separation of test objectives. This test focuses on the navigation logic of the pagination and the fundamental structural integrity of each page. A deeper, content-level validation of each individual article would be the job of a separate, specialized test. This strategic separation makes the tests faster, clearer, and significantly easier to maintain.

The result is complete control over the entire paginated display of content. The client can now be confident that there will be no "nasty surprises" on page 17 or page 53—such as a completely blank page, missing images, or broken links. The complex and error-prone manual process has been replaced by a robust, automated test that ensures the integrity of the entire section, regardless of how many pages it contains.

This use case demonstrates how we at TESTIFY find intelligent and pragmatic solutions even for non-standard UI components. We analyze the specific logic of a feature and build a test that replicates and reliably verifies this logic, rather than failing because of it.

Does your application also use complex navigation or display elements that resist simple automation? We will find a way to test them reliably and efficiently.