Selenium Programming

Programming Your Test

Now we’ll illustrate how to program your own tests using examples in each of the supported programming languages. There are essentially two tasks:

• Generate your script into a programming language from Selenium-IDE, optionally modifying the result.
• Write a very simple main program that executes the generated code.

Optionally, you can adopt a test engine platform like JUnit or TestNG for Java, or NUnit for .NET if you are using one of those languages.

Here, we show language-specific examples. The language-specific APIs tend to differ from one to another, so you’ll find a separate explanation for each.

• Java
• C#
• Python
• Ruby
• Perl, PHP

Java

For Java, people use either JUnit or TestNG as the test engine. Some development environments like Eclipse have direct support for these via plug-ins. This makes it even easier. Teaching JUnit or TestNG is beyond the scope of this document however materials may be found online and there are publications available. If you are already a “java-shop” chances are your developers will already have some experience with one of these test frameworks.

You will probably want to rename the test class from “NewTest” to something of your own choosing. Also, you will need to change the browser-open parameters in the statement:

selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*iehta", "http://www.google.com/");

The Selenium-IDE generated code will look like this. This example has comments added manually for additional clarity.

package com.example.tests;

// We specify the package of our tests

import com.thoughtworks.selenium.*;

// This is the driver's import. You'll use this for instantiating a

// browser and making it do what you need.

import java.util.regex.Pattern;

// Selenium-IDE add the Pattern module because it's sometimes used for

// regex validations. You can remove the module if it's not used in your

// script.

public class NewTest extends SeleneseTestCase {

// We create our Selenium test case

      public void setUp() throws Exception {

        setUp("http://www.google.com/", "*firefox");

             // We instantiate and start the browser

      }

      public void testNew() throws Exception {

           selenium.open("/");

           selenium.type("q", "selenium rc");

           selenium.click("btnG");

           selenium.waitForPageToLoad("30000");

           assertTrue(selenium.isTextPresent("Results * for selenium rc"));

           // These are the real test steps

     }

}

C#

The .NET Client Driver works with Microsoft.NET. It can be used with any .NET testing framework like NUnit or the Visual Studio 2005 Team System.

Selenium-IDE assumes you will use NUnit as your testing framework. You can see this in the generated code below. It includes the using statement for NUnit along with corresponding NUnit attributes identifying the role for each member function of the test class.

You will probably have to rename the test class from “NewTest” to something of your own choosing. Also, you will need to change the browser-open parameters in the statement:

selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*iehta", "http://www.google.com/");

The generated code will look similar to this.

You can allow NUnit to manage the execution of your tests. Or alternatively, you can write a simple main() program that instantiates the test object and runs each of the three methods, SetupTest(), TheNewTest(), and TeardownTest() in turn.

Python

Pyunit is the test framework to use for Python.

Ruby

Selenium-IDE generates reasonable Ruby, but requires the old Selenium gem. This is a problem because the official Ruby driver for Selenium is the Selenium-Client gem, not the old Selenium gem. In fact, the Selenium gem is no longer even under active development.

Therefore, it is advisable to update any Ruby scripts generated by the IDE as follows:

1. On line 1, change require "selenium" to require "selenium/client"

2. On line 11, change Selenium::SeleniumDriver.new to Selenium::Client::Driver.new

You probably also want to change the class name to something more informative than “Untitled,” and change the test method’s name to something other than “test_untitled.”

Here is a simple example created by modifying the Ruby code generated by Selenium IDE, as described above.

Perl, PHP

The members of the documentation team have not used Selenium RC with Perl or PHP. If you are using Selenium RC with either of these two languages please contact the Documentation Team (see the chapter on contributing). We would love to include some examples from you and your experiences, to support Perl and PHP users.

Learning the API

The Selenium RC API uses naming conventions that, assuming you understand Selenese, much of the interface will be self-explanatory. Here, however, we explain the most critical and possibly less obvious aspects.

Starting the Browser

setUp("http://www.google.com/", "*firefox");

Each of these examples opens the browser and represents that browser by assigning a “browser instance” to a program variable. This program variable is then used to call methods from the browser. These methods execute the Selenium commands, i.e. like open or type or the verify commands.

The parameters required when creating the browser instance are:

host

Specifies the IP address of the computer where the server is located. Usually, this is the same machine as where the client is running, so in this case localhost is passed. In some clients this is an optional parameter.

port

Specifies the TCP/IP socket where the server is listening waiting for the client to establish a connection. This also is optional in some client drivers.

browser

The browser in which you want to run the tests. This is a required parameter.

url

The base url of the application under test. This is required by all the client libs and is integral information for starting up the browser-proxy-AUT communication.

Note that some of the client libraries require the browser to be started explicitly by calling itsstart() method.

Running Commands

Once you have the browser initialized and assigned to a variable (generally named “selenium”) you can make it run Selenese commands by calling the respective methods from the browser variable. For example, to call the type method of the selenium object:

selenium.type(“field-id”,”string to type”)

In the background the browser will actually perform a type operation, essentially identical to a user typing input into the browser, by using the locator and the string you specified during the method call.

Reporting Results

Selenium RC does not have its own mechanism for reporting results. Rather, it allows you to build your reporting customized to your needs using features of your chosen programming language. That’s great, but what if you simply want something quick that’s already done for you? Often an existing library or test framework can meet your needs faster than developing your own test reporting code.

Test Framework Reporting Tools

Test frameworks are available for many programming languages. These, along with their primary function of providing a flexible test engine for executing your tests, include library code for reporting results. For example, Java has two commonly used test frameworks, JUnit and TestNG. .NET also has its own, NUnit.

We won’t teach the frameworks themselves here; that’s beyond the scope of this user guide. We will simply introduce the framework features that relate to Selenium along with some techniques you can apply. There are good books available on these test frameworks however along with information on the internet.

Test Report Libraries

Also available are third-party libraries specifically created for reporting test results in your chosen programming language. These often support a variety of formats such as HTML or PDF.

What’s The Best Approach?

Most people new to the testing frameworks will begin with the framework’s built-in reporting features. From there most will examine any available libraries as that’s less time consuming than developing your own. As you begin to use Selenium no doubt you will start putting in your own “print statements” for reporting progress. That may gradually lead to you developing your own reporting, possibly in parallel to using a library or test framework. Regardless, after the initial, but short, learning curve you will naturally develop what works best for your own situation.

Test Reporting Examples

To illustrate, we’ll direct you to some specific tools in some of the other languages supported by Selenium. The ones listed here are commonly used and have been used extensively (and therefore recommended) by the authors of this guide.

Test Reports in Java

·         If Selenium Test cases are developed using JUnit then JUnit Report can be used to generate test reports. Refer to JUnit Report for specifics.

·         If Selenium Test cases are developed using TestNG then no external task is required to generate test reports. The TestNG framework generates an HTML report which list details of tests. See TestNG Report for more.

·         ReportNG is a HTML reporting plug-in for the TestNG framework. It is intended as a replacement for the default TestNG HTML report. ReportNG provides a simple, colour-coded view of the test results. See ReportNG for more.

·         Also, for a very nice summary report try using TestNG-xslt. A TestNG-xslt Report looks like this.

See TestNG-xslt for more.