Test Automation Using Selenium

GM QA Community | Automation Forum Series | Session 1
Java Extensibility using QTP

Apr 2013
Sapient Global Markets QA
Test Automation Using Selenium

Sept 2012
Test Automation
• Test automation is the use of software

To set test preconditions.
To control the execution of tests.
 To compare the actual outcomes to predicted outcomes.
To report the Execution Status.
• Commonly, test automation involves automating a manual process already in place
that uses a formalized testing process.
© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 3

Selenium Webdriver
A solution to cross browser testing.

A server, written in Java and so available on all the platforms.
Acts as a proxy for web requests from them.
Client libraries for many popular languages.
Bundles Selenium Core and automatically loads into the browser
Can be run on multiple client from a single host.

Installing Selenium Webdriver
Software Required
JDK 1.6 , selenium-Webdriver-2.x(this can be
downloaded from http://seleniumhq.org/download/)
Installation Procedure
Selenium Webdriver is simply a jar file and to run it
we need java installed. (JDK 1.6 is preferred)
Once the Java is installed just unzip the selenium-
Webdriver-2.x.zip which was downloaded from the
selenium site to a directory.

Selenium Test Automation
Process
• First Generate the Script using selenium IDE in the firefox IDE
• Once the Scripts are recorded add assertions where ever
required
• Now format the Selenese test into the language of your choice.
Please refer to the Image

Selenium Test Automation
Process
• Once the Selenese script is converted into your

preferred language you can you can run them using
Selenium Server.
• For running the script you also need the client driver
for that particular language.
• To enhance the script we will require an IDE like
netbeans or Eclipse IDE (JAVA)
• To Integrate the script and run them as a suite we will
require build integration tools like Maven or Ant.

How Selenium Works
Selenium-
RC
Selenium-
Webdriver
Selenium Web Driver works in the same way users interacts with the web pages. In
contrast to Selenium RC, it doesn't need a server to run. It directly starts a browser
instance and controls it.

Running a Selenese Test on Different
Browsers
 Following are the steps to create a selenese test suite and

run a test suite using selenium
1) Record a test case using selenium IDE and save it as “Test1.html” (say).
2) Record another test case using selenium IDE and save it as “Test3.html” (or in any other
scripting language).
3) In this way you can record any number of test case using selenium IDE and save them as
<filename>.html
4) Then Create a New Test Suite using the File Menu. See the Image Below.

Selenese Suite cont..
Add the created test cases in to the suite as shown in

Image1
Once the test cases are added to the suite save them as
a test suite as in Image2
Then Open the command prompt and navigate to the
directory where Selenium server is placed.
In the command prompt Enter the command as shown
below.

Selenese Suite cont..
Command :
 java -jar selenium-server.jar -multiwindow -
htmlSuite "*iexplore"
"https://localhost/bookstore/"
"D:\testa.html" "C:\results.html“
 Once the command is run the results will be

stored in the results.html file as shown
below.

Selenium Test Case Development
Using Java
Required Software:
selenium-java.2.32.0.zip , Selenium Java Client Driver jar , JDK 1.6 +, Eclipse
(or any other IDE), Junit jar and testing jar
For building the frame work we require continuous build integration tools
like Ant, Maven or cruise control.

Client Drivers
Enables communication of browsers with Selenium.
Functionality of Selenium is exposed via these drivers.

Available in Ruby, Python, Java, C-Sharp …and so on.
Give access to the rich features and libraries of the language,
including their unit testing framework.
Makes it possible to develop automated scripts in the same
language as product.
Which one you should use?
Depends on your application under test. Most Popular is java, which will be
used here for the context of the training.

Asserts and Verify commands
• Assert and verify are verification commands in Selenese

(assertTitle, assertText, verifyTitle, verifyText).
Assert Verify
When an "assert" fails, the test is aborted. When a "verify"(Soft Assertions) fails, the
test will continue execution, logging the
failure.
Assert pass/fail is logged in the result logs With Verify failures user has to check the
automatically. logs or the console to get details or to
modify the code for all individual
verification check points.

waitFor commands
• "waitFor" commands wait for some condition to become true
(which can be useful for testing Ajax applications). They will
succeed immediately if the condition is already true.
• waitFor commands will fail and halt the test if the condition
does not become true within the current timeout setting
(setTimeout).
• Example: waitForElementPresent or waitForVisible, which wait

dynamically, checking for the desired condition every second
and continuing to the next command in the script as soon as
the condition is met.

Locating elements
Locating by ID
This is the most common way of locating elements since ID’s are
supposed to be unique for each element.
Target Format: id=id of the element

Locating elements
• Locating by Name
o Locating elements by name are very similar to locating by ID, except that
we use the “name=” prefix instead.
o Target Format: name=name of the element

Locating elements
Locating by Link Text

This type of locator applies only to hyperlink texts. We access the link by
prefixing our target with “link=” and then followed by the hyperlink text.
Target Format: link=link_text

Locating elements
Locating by CSS Selector

CSS Selectors are string patterns used to identify an element based on a
combination of HTML tag, id, class, and attributes.Locating by CSS
Selector is more complicated than the previous methods, but it is the most
common locating strategy of advanced Selenium users because it can
access even those elements that have no ID or name.
CSS Selectors have many formats, but we will only focus on the most
common ones.
Tag and ID
Tag and class
Tag and attribute
Tag, class, and attribute
Inner text

Locating elements
• Locating by CSS Selector – Tag and ID
Syntax Description
•tag = the HTML tag of the element being accessed
•# = the hash sign. This should always be present when using a CSS
css=tag#id
Selector with ID
•id = the ID of the element being accessed

Locating elements
Locating by CSS Selector – Tag and Class

Locating by CSS Selector using an HTML tag and a class name is similar to using a tag and ID, but in this
case, a dot (.) is used instead of a hash sign.
Syntax Description
css=tag.clas •. = the dot sign. This should always be present when using a CSS Selector
s with class
•class = the class of the element being accessed

Locating elements
Locating by CSS Selector – Tag and Attribute

This strategy uses the HTML tag and a specific attribute of the element to be accessed.
Syntax Description
•[ and ] = square brackets within which a specific attribute and its
css=tag[attri corresponding value will be placed
bute=value] •attribute = the attribute to be used. It is advisable to use an attribute that is
unique to the element such as a name or ID.
•value = the corresponding value of the chosen attribute.

Locating elements
• Locating by CSS Selector - tag, class, and attribute
Syntax Description
•. = the dot sign. This should always be present when using a CSS Selector
with class
css=tag.cl •class = the class of the element being accessed
ass[attribut •[ and ] = square brackets within which a specific attribute and its
e=value] corresponding value will be placed
•attribute = the attribute to be used. It is advisable to use an attribute that is
unique to the element such as a name or ID.
•value = the corresponding value of the chosen attribute.

Locating elements
Locating by CSS Selector – inner text

As you may have noticed, HTML labels are seldom given id, name, or class attributes. So,
how do we access them? The answer is through the use of their inner texts. Inner texts are
the actual string patterns that the HTML label shows on the page.
Syntax Description
css=tag:contains(“inner text”)
•inner text = the inner text of the element

Locating elements
Locating by DOM (Document Object Model)

The Document Object Model (DOM), in simple terms, is the way by which HTML elements
are structured. Selenium IDE is able to use the DOM in accessing page elements. If we use
this method, our Target box will always start with “dom=document...”; however, the “dom=”
prefix is normally removed because Selenium IDE is able to automatically interpret anything
that starts with the keyword “document” to be a path within the DOM anyway.
There are four basic ways to locate an element through DOM:
getElementById
getElementsByName
dom:name (applies only to elements within a named form)
dom:index

Locating elements
• Locating by DOM (Document Object Model) Syntax:

Syntax Description
id of the element = this is the value of the ID
document.getElementById(“id of the attribute of the element to be accessed. This
element”) value should always be enclosed in a pair of
parentheses (“”).
•name = name of the element as defined by its
document.getElementsByName(“na „name‟ attribute
me”)[index] •index = an integer that indicates which element
within getElementsByName‟s array will be used.
•name of the form = the value of the name
document.forms[“name of the attribute of the form tag that contains the element
form”].elements[“name of the you want to access
element”] •name of the element = the value of the name
attribute of the element you wish to access
Locating elements
Contd.
Syntax Description
•index of the form = the index number (starting at

0) of the form with respect to the whole page
document.forms[index of the
•index of the element = the index number
form].elements[index of the element]
(starting at 0) of the element with respect to the
whole form that contains it

Locating elements
Locating by Xpath
XPath is the language used when locating XML (Extensible Markup Language) nodes. Since
HTML can be thought of as an implementation of XML, we can also use XPath in locating HTML
elements.
Advantage: It can access almost any element, even those without class, name, or id
attributes.
Disadvantage: It is the most complicated method of identifying elements because of too
many different rules and considerations.
Fortunately, Firebug can automatically generate XPath locators.

Locating elements
Locating by Xpath
3
Process of Developing Selenium
Java Scripts.
Following are the steps for generating the

test scripts in java
1) Record the Script in Selenium IDE and import them into Java
2) Create a Selenium Java project in Eclipse and load all the necessary jar
files
3) Copy the formatted Java code into the Eclipse and run the test.

Formatting the recorded
script into Java
Steps of formatting the code into java
1) Open the Browser and open the base URL of

the application.
2) Open the Selenium IDE and start recording the
test steps.
3) Once the recording is done go to Menu 
Options  Format  Selenium Junit 4
(webdriver)
4) You can see the java code in the source tab of
IDE. Save the test case with .java extension.

Setting Up an Eclipse Project for
Selenium Automation
• Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are

focused on building an extensible development platform for
building Java applications and frameworks. Eclipse is one of the
best Java IDE and as a matter of face Eclipse is much more than
a Java IDE.
• We can configure a selenium project in eclipse and even run
the scripts from eclipse.
• Using eclipse its easy to enhance the recorded script. We can
add power to the recorded script by parameterizing the test
inputs and even validate the back values.
• Eclipse also allows us to write reusable code for efficient test
automation.

Installing Eclipse
• Download the “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers” from the

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ page.
• Unzip the downloaded zip file from the above site into a
directory.
• Once the unzipping is over open the folder and double click on
the icon and it will open a dialog box as shown below.

Setting up the workspace
• Create a folder say (selenium) in any one of the

directory and change the workspace location to the
directory created by you. Then click ok button.
• On doing so you will see the eclipse welcome screen if
you are doing it for the first time. On the welcome
screen click on the workbench icon to open the
project explorer.
• When you to try to open the eclipse from next time it
will directly show the project explorer as shown in the
next slide.

Eclipse IDE
Package Scrip View

Explorer
console

Create a Project In eclipse
• File  New  Java Project • Specify the project name

and click finish

Adding the required Jars
• Open the folder contain the selenium project that you have just
created. Inside that folder create another folder with name
“lib”
• Inside the lib folder place the following jar files.
junit-4.8.1.jar
selenium-java-client-driver.jar
selenium-server.jar
testng-5.12.jars
After placing the jar file in lib come back to the eclipse and
click on the project explorer strip and press F5. You should see
the all the jar files under the lib folder in the project explorer as
shown in the Image in next slide.

Selenium Libraries

Creating a package and adding a
class file
• In the eclipse  Package
Explorer  right click on the
src (source) folder. In that
select New  Package and
give a name to the package.
See the Picture1
• Now right click on the created
package and click on new 
class and provide a class
name. You will see a java
script template as seen in the
next slide

Eclipse IDE with Java Script Template
• Your IDE should look like this
This is where you have copy the

Java code that you formatted in the
Selenium IDE

Adding the Jar files to the class path
• Right Click on the Project

• Select Build Path  Configure Build path
• On the next window click on the libraries tab
and click on the add jars tab

Adding the Jar files to the class path
• As you click on the add jars button a
window showing all the jar files will
be opened. Select all the jar files and
click on ok button
• By doing this step we are almost
ready to write the script and run it.

Creating the test script inside the class file
• Copy the code that was formatted in the selenium IDE and
paste it in the Eclipse IDE script template.
• Make sure the class name that you created and the class name
in the script are same
• Make sure that you have add the methods setUp and tearDown

Running the test through Eclipse
• Start the Selenium Server

• For this open the command prompt and go to the folder where
the selenium server is present.
• Run the command “java -jar selenium-server.jar”
• The Selenium server will start running and you can see the
message in the command prompt.

Running the test through Eclipse
• Once the server is up go to the eclipse and right click on the

script.
• In that select Run As  JUnit Test. See the image below. After
this you will get will see that the script has run successfully in
the window that’s shown in the next slide.

Selenium Results Strip in the Eclipse IDE
success
failure

Components of the Selenium test Script
setUp method
This method prepares the selenium server to run the test. This
method basically hooks to the selenium server and opens up
the base URL of the application
test*** method
The methods with the name test will actually run the tests on
the application. There can be any number of test methods in
the app
tearDown method
This method will run after the end of the test. This test will
disconnect with the server and makes room for the next tests
to run the tests.
Script View

Enhancing the Selenium commands
The generated selenium command can be enhanced by writing java commands. Using java
methods we can do parameterization and data base validation.
More over java methods can be used for to perform some complex validations and testing
activities.
The best way to use java methods is used to is have a Java IDE like eclipse.

Example 1 – Get the values from the list box and check if the
value “HTML” is present in it
Implementation Steps
1) First get the values from the list box
2) To get the values from the list box or any other HTML element we need to know its Xpath.
(use Xpath checker)
3) The values taken from the list box are stored in a variable.
4) Use the indexOf method to find if “HTML” is present in the extracted variable.

Screen Shot of the Example Script
Xpath Locator

Parameterization
• Parameterization is to run the same test script with

multiple set of data.
• The data will be stored in a CSV file.
• We will have write a program to read the values from
the excel line by line and replace the values.
• For reading the values from a CSV file we will require
the following packages
import java.io.File;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;

Parameterization Example

Ant Integration
Ant is a free tool from the Apache Jakarta Group
 Originally written by James Duncan Davidson
on an airplane from Europe to the US...
 Like ‘make’ for Java – only better
 Uses an XML file to drive its action
 Extremely powerful and modular
 Easily extensible
 Written in Java so it is cross platform

To Integrate with ANT
Download ANT and copy it into any of the directory

Create a JAVA_HOME environment Variable
Create a ANT_HOME environment variables
Add the ANT bin path to windows path environment variable
run
Create a build file to load all the jar files and create targets to
the selenium tests using the build file

Defining a folder Structure for Selenium ANT
task

Running the ANT selenium task
• Start the selenium server through the command

prompt
• Then go the folder where the selenium tests are
stored
• Make sure that the build.xml file is present in that
location
• Now run the command “ant” from the command
prompt
• You can see the test running and the results will be
saved in the results.txt file.

Selenium-Grid
Selenium-Grid allows the Selenium-RC solution to scale for test

suites or test suites to be run in multiple environments.
• With Selenium-Grid multiple instances of Selenium-RC are

running on various operating system and browser configurations,
each of these when launching register with a hub. When tests are
sent to the hub they are then redirected to an available Selenium-
RC, which will launch the browser and run the test.
• This allows for running tests in parallel, with the entire test suite
theoretically taking only as long to run as the longest individual test.

How to use Grid
• Download Selenium Grid latest binary distribution and
unpack it on your computer.
• Go at the root of selenium grid directory and validate
your installation:
 cd selenium-grid-1.0
 ant sanity-check
• Go to the selenium distribution directory and launch
in a new terminal:
 ant launch-hub
Check out that the Hub is running by looking at its
console in a browser:
http://localhost:4444/console (See the Browser in the next slide)

How to use Grid (Contd.)

How to Run
In a new terminal enter the following command

• ant launch-remote-control
Based on your target file you can run either in sequence or in parallel

What's good?
• Relatively easy to automate web UI tests
• Record/Replay for regression tests
• RC allows integration with CI and JUnit/FitNesse tests

What's bad?
• Speed: RC->Browser communication is a speed bottleneck (run in grid,
overnight)‫‏‬
• UI is brittle, tests depending on the UI break a lot (DSTL might fix this,
page abstractions as well)‫‏‬
• Data-backed tests are not easily repeatable (integrate with DB test
engines)‫‏‬

Best practices
• Use Selenium to verify workflow and session

• Don't put Selenium tests in your main development build – run them
overnight
• Have dedicated machines that run tests
• DON'T THINK OF THIS AS A REPLACEMENT FOR EXPLORATORY TESTING!!!

Useful links
• http://gojko.net
• http://www.openqa.org
• http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile2008/agile-2008-domain.php
• http://storytestiq.solutionsiq.com
• http://www.cubictest.com
• http://fitnesse.info/webtest

Test Automation Using Selenium

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GM QA Community | Automation Forum Series | Session 1

Java Extensibility using QTP

Test Automation Using Selenium

• Test automation is the use of software

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 3

A solution to cross browser testing.

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 4

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 5

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 6

• Once the Selenese script is converted into your

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 7

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 8

 Following are the steps to create a selenese test suite and

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 9

Add the created test cases in to the suite as shown in

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 10

 Once the command is run the results will be

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 11

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 12

Enables communication of browsers with Selenium.

Functionality of Selenium is exposed via these drivers.

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 13

• Assert and verify are verification commands in Selenese

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 14

• Example: waitForElementPresent or waitForVisible, which wait

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 15

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 16

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 17

Locating by Link Text

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 18

Locating by CSS Selector

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 19

• Locating by CSS Selector – Tag and ID

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 20

Locating by CSS Selector – Tag and Class

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 21

Locating by CSS Selector – Tag and Attribute

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 22

• Locating by CSS Selector - tag, class, and attribute

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 23

Locating by CSS Selector – inner text

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 24

Locating by DOM (Document Object Model)

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 25

• Locating by DOM (Document Object Model) Syntax:

•index of the form = the index number (starting at

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 27

Fortunately, Firebug can automatically generate XPath locators.

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 28

Following are the steps for generating the

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 30

Steps of formatting the code into java

1) Open the Browser and open the base URL of

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 31

• Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 32

• Download the “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers” from the

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 33

• Create a folder say (selenium) in any one of the

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 34

Package Scrip View

© COPYRIGHT 2011 SAPIENT CORPORATION | CONFIDENTIAL 35

• File  New  Java Project • Specify the project name