Practical Tips & Tricks for Selenium Test Automation - Dave Haeffner
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The document provides an extensive overview of Selenium tips and tricks, including resources for beginners, best practices for headless testing, visual testing methods, and advanced techniques like proxy server usage and file management strategies. It highlights the importance of visual testing to catch UI issues, discusses configuration options for various testing scenarios, and suggests resources for further learning. Key topics include using Selenium with tools like PhantomJS, managing A/B testing, and strategies for file uploads and downloads.
Practical Tips & Tricks for Selenium Test Automation - Dave Haeffner
- 1. Selenium Tips & Tricks by Dave Haeffner @TourDeDave
- 2. 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
- 5. Headless Benefits: - Speed - Maintenance - Screenshotting
- 7. Why use it? Ideal for running small test suites on a headless machine e.g., a Continuous Integration (CI) Server
- 8. NOTE - display port collisions - use unique values - e.g., CI build number
- 12. Why use it? • Faster execution times • Also useful for a CI server • Not limited to just Linux
- 13. Step 2 - Start PhantomJS w/ WebDriver flag Step 1 - Download PhantomJS http://phantomjs.org/download.html Step 3 - Connect Your Test to PhantomJS using Selenium Remote NOTE You can also connect PhantomJS to a Selenium Grid http://bit.ly/ghost-driver-grid
- 15. Visual Testing
- 16. 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
- 17. Visual Testing Challenges • Managing complexity • False positives • e.g., shifting content, dynamic content, typos
- 26. 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
- 27. Selenium Grid Resources • http://elementalselenium.com/tips/26-cloud • http://elementalselenium.com/tips/52-grid • http://elementalselenium.com/tips/70-grid-extras
- 28. Fun with a Proxy Server
- 32. 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
- 39. 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)
- 43. 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)
- 46. Adapted from ruby-jmeter example from flood.io https://github.com/flood-io/ruby-jmeter
- 50. Option 1 - Proxy Server Option 2 - HTTP Library Option 3 - JavaScript
- 51. Option 1: Proxy Server
- 55. Option 2: HTTP Library
- 63. 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)
- 72. • 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
- 73. 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
- 78. File Management
- 79. Uploading a File
- 81. 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)
- 85. 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
- 86. With Selenium
- 87. With Selenium
- 90. With an HTTP library
- 91. With an HTTP library (for secure files)
- 105. 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