By Paul Krill
JetBrains has announced the official public release of Aqua, an IDE explicitly designed for test automation. It supports the Selenium, Cypress, and Playwright testing framworks out of the box.
Introduced May 16 and available at jetbrains.com, Aqua allows test automation engineers and developers to build automated tests for user interfaces, APIs, and other application areas. A polyglot IDE, Aqua understands Java, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and SQL, includes a test runner and debugger, and provides AI coding assistance, code completion, and refactoring capabilities.
JetBrains said Aqua covers many aspects of test automation work including database management, with the ability to connect to multiple databases and verify application data, providing an editor-based HTTP client that runs complex HTTP requests and assertions, providing Docker support for running containers, and providing an embedded web inspector that allows users to view web applications.
A public preview of Aqua was launched in November 2022; an update to Aqua was introduced last June. The IDE initially supported the Selenium API and Selenide API. Last year, Aqua added support for the Playwright and Cypress testing frameworks. Along with commercial licenses, JetBrains makes Aqua available in a free version for beginner test engineers. Developers can share feedback on Aqua at jetbrains.com.
