Selenium Tips & Tricks

by Dave Haeffner @TourDeDave

New to Selenium?

• Selenium Bootcamp http://bit.ly/se-bootcamp

• Selenium Guidebook http://bit.ly/se-guidebook

• Weekly Selenium Tips http://bit.ly/se-weekly-tips

http://ElementalSelenium.com

etc. http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/

HeadlessBenefits: - Speed - Maintenance - Screenshotting

Headless w/ Xvfbhttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/38-headless

Why use it?

Ideal for running small test suites on a headless machine e.g., a Continuous Integration (CI) Server

NOTE- display port collisions - use unique values - e.g., CI build number

Headless w/ GhostDriverhttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/46-headless-ghostdriver

http://phantomjs.org/

Why use it?

• Faster execution times • Also useful for a CI server • Not limited to just Linux

Step 2 - Start PhantomJS w/ WebDriver flag

Step 1 - Download PhantomJShttp://phantomjs.org/download.html

Step 3 - Connect Your Test to PhantomJS using Selenium Remote

NOTEYou can also connect PhantomJS to a Selenium Grid http://bit.ly/ghost-driver-grid

Visual Testing

A Visual Testing Primer• check that an application’s UI appears correctly to its users

• goal: find visual bugs before the user does

• e.g., font, layout, rendering issues

• can also be used to verify content

• e.g., charts, dashboards, etc.

• hundreds of assertions for a few lines of code

• at least 16 open source solutions available to choose from

Visual Testing Challenges

• Managing complexity

• False positives

• e.g., shifting content, dynamic content, typos

Visual Testing Write-ups

http://bit.ly/se-visual-1 Getting Started

http://bit.ly/se-visual-2 False Positives part 1

http://bit.ly/se-visual-3 False Positives part 2

http://bit.ly/se-visual-4 Add Visual Testing To Your Existing Tests

http://bit.ly/se-visual-5 Add Visual Testing To Your BDD Tests

Selenium Grid Resources

• http://elementalselenium.com/tips/26-cloud

• http://elementalselenium.com/tips/52-grid

• http://elementalselenium.com/tips/70-grid-extras

Fun with a Proxy Server

Selenium Browser Proxy Server

Application Under Test

HTTP Status Codeshttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/17-retrieve-http-status-codes

Configuration

• Use a proxy server to capture the traffic from your Selenium test(s)

• Find the status code for the action you’re interested in (e.g., visiting a URL)

• Assert that the status code is what you expect

Blacklistinghttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/66-blacklist

Configuration

• Use a proxy server to manipulate the traffic from your Selenium test(s)

• Identify third-party resources that are slow to load (which could negatively impact your tests)

• Blacklist them (e.g., make it so they don’t load)

Load Testinghttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/68-load-testing-revisited

Configuration

• Use a proxy server to capture the traffic from your Selenium test(s)

• Convert the HTTP Archive into a JMeter JMX file

• Run the new JMX file with JMeter to enact load on your application (modify as needed)

Adapted from ruby-jmeter example from flood.io https://github.com/flood-io/ruby-jmeter

Broken Image Checkinghttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/67-broken-images

Option 1 - Proxy Server

Option 2 - HTTP Library

Option 3 - JavaScript

Option 1: Proxy Server

Proxy Server Cont’d

Proxy Server Cont’d

Proxy Server Cont’d

Option 2: HTTP Library

HTTP Library Cont’d

HTTP Library Cont’d

Option 3: JavaScript

JavaScript Cont’d

JavaScript Cont’d

JavaScript Cont’d

Forgot Passwordhttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/43-forgot-password

Configuration• Use Selenium to trigger a forgot password workflow

(to a Gmail account) and keep the browser session active

• Retrieve the e-mail and the password information via the Gmail API

• Use the password information in the active Selenium session (if applicable)

A/B Testinghttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/12-opt-out-of-ab-tests

• 3 page states available

• You can identify which state you’re in because there is different header text for each

• When you’re in the control: A/B Test Control

• For the variation: A/B Test Variation 1

• When you’re not in a test: No A/B Test

http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/abtest

Configuration

• You can easily opt-out of A/B tests by

• forging a cookie

• appending a query to the URL

• This way you get a known state of the page which isn’t likely to change without your knowledge

File Management

Uploading a File

Workaround

• Rather than use something like AutoIt (which is a bad idea)

• You can send the file path you want to upload into the form input field (side-stepping the system dialog entirely)

http://bit.ly/se-file-detector

Downloading a Filehttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/2-download-a-file http://elementalselenium.com/tips/8-download-a-file-revisited http://elementalselenium.com/tips/15-download-secure-files

Two approaches• Configure Selenium to download to local disk, and

delete the file when done

• Use an HTTP library, perform a HEAD request, and check the headers for the correct content type & length.

Why? • An order of magnitude faster using Selenium • No need to download the file

With Selenium

With Selenium

With an HTTP library

With an HTTP library (for secure files)

Additional Output

Highlight Elementshttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/65-highlight-elements

Growl Notificationshttp://elementalselenium.com/tips/53-growl

New to Selenium?

• Selenium Bootcamp http://bit.ly/se-bootcamp

• Selenium Guidebook http://bit.ly/se-guidebook

• Weekly Selenium Tips http://bit.ly/se-weekly-tips

http://ElementalSelenium.com http://bit.ly/oss-es-tips

Get in touch

@TourDeDave

dhaeffner@gmail.com

DaveHaeffner.com