Selenium

This is mostly a place holder while we develop more content. Here are some useful links...

The Basics

• Selenium Website

• Selenium downloads

• Selenium commands reference

• Selenium documentation
  • Test Design Considerations

• Testing Ajax apps with Selenium using waitForCondition - note that waitForCondition is now part of Selenium core (not a plugin as this article mentions).

Setting up Selenium IDE

1. Download/install Selenium IDE for Firefox

2. Open Selenium IDE from Firefox under the Tools pulldown menu

3. Once IDE is open, go to: Options > Options... > Locator Builders and reorder them to (from top down): id, name, link, css, ui, ...then everything else...

Ordering them like this makes for faster running tests, as finding unique elements (id, name, link) is faster (and easier to read) than hunting for them using another method. The fallback is using css selectors, as css selectors have proven to be faster than xPath.

Element Locators

A common way to find elements on a page using Selenium is xPath, however, we should use CSS selectors when possible, as the tests run faster - especially in IE. See: Why CSS Locators are the way to go vs XPath

The best way to find elements is by using their unique ids, in the form of an 'id' or 'name' html attribute, or a specific link. When an element does not have any unique id attached to it, the best fallback is using css selectors. See: Selenium Tips: CSS Selectors in Selenium Demystified.

Testing dynamic applications (AJAX)

The main things you'll need to test AJAX calls and other dynamic functions are the waitFor... commands. Here are a few of the most useful ones:

waitForCondition(script, timeout)

This is the AJAX command - well almost; also see waitForElementPresent below.

Arguments:

• script - the JavaScript snippet to run
• timeout - a timeout in milliseconds, after which this command will return with an error

Runs the specified JavaScript snippet repeatedly until it evaluates to "true". The snippet may have multiple lines, but only the result of the last line will be considered.

Note that, by default, the snippet will be run in the runner's test window, not in the window of your application. To get the window of your application, you can use the JavaScript snippet selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow(), and then run your JavaScript in there.

Examples.

waitForElementPresent(locator)

The other AJAX biggie. Similar to waitForCondition. This waits for a certain element to appear (i.e., often an element being loaded via an ajax call).

Generated from isElementPresent(locator)

Arguments:

• locator - an element locator

Returns: true if the element is present, false otherwise

Verifies that the specified element is somewhere on the page.

waitForVisible(locator)

Generated from isVisible(locator). Also not it's evil twin, waitForNotVisible(locator). These are good when an element is on a page but hidden (i.e., a popup) and your test requires you to wait for it to become visible before clicking on some element inside it.

Arguments:

• locator - an element locator

Returns: true if the specified element is visible, false otherwise

Determines if the specified element is visible. An element can be rendered invisible by setting the CSS "visibility" property to "hidden", or the "display" property to "none", either for the element itself or one if its ancestors. This method will fail if the element is not present.

Example:

waitForVisible(id=hgTrackUiDialog)

Wait for the UiDialog (which has an id=hgTrackUiDialog) to appear so the test can continue and click on elements in this dialog.

Selenium Resources

• The Official Selenium Blog
• Selenium Users Group (Google) - highly recommended, very active
• Selenium Wiki
• OpenQA Selenium Wiki
• SauceLabs Selenium Blogs Posts
• Selenium Examples blog - examples and tips for Selenium
• Selenium Conference

General Automated Testing Resources

• The Testing Blog
• Software Testing Best Practices blog
• Web application testing checklists:
  • on wiki.answers.com
  • Testing Your Web Apps