Selenium RC for web application test automation

Selenium is a very popular - open source - web application test automation - tool.
Selenium is very powerful mainly because of the programming language support it has for - ruby, python, perl, java, etc. That brings a lot of these languages' features like adding logic and handling database connections to the test tool.
Today's web applications are multi-tiered and automating tests for them is a challenge. Selenium makes life easy by providing cross-platform execution and cross-browser compatibility testing.
So, how do we create and run Selenium tests ? Check out the following.
You need:
  1. Knoweldge in HTML will be extremely useful.
  2. Latest Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Get it from Oracle/Sun and install it. Test if it's installed correctly by running: java -version from the command line.
  3. Firefox browser. Download it from Mozilla and install
  4. Firebug Addon for Firefox browser. This Addon is very useful when locating elements and their attributes. Get it from getfirebug.com. Install the Addon. You should see 'Firebug' in the Firefox Tools menu option.
  5. Firexpath Addon for Firefox browser. This works with Firebug and is available as another tab 'xpath' in the firebug window. Sometimes, on dynamic web applications, attributes (id, name, etc) of the elements of a web page are dynamically generated too. This means everytime the page is generated, the attribute will change. Then, we have to uniquely identify the element in reference to a label or text surrounding it. So, get it from here
  6. Selenium RC. Selenium RC is the core engine that is used to execute the tests. Download it from seleniumhq.org/download/
  7. Selenium IDE. Selenium IDE is a Firefox Plug-in (Addon) used to record / create tests from the UI. Download it from seleniumhq.org/download/. After installation, you should see 'Selenium IDE' in the Firefox Tools menu option.
  8. Download psycopg2 if you need your scripts to talk to Postgresql via python. Download the psycopg2 windows installer for python version 2.6 from here: http://www.stickpeople.com/projects/python/win-psycopg/psycopg2-2.2.2.wi...
Steps to setup Selenium RC on Windows:
  1. Extract the downloaded Selenium RC package (Eg. selenium-remote-control-1.0.3.zip) into your local folder. You should see many folder as shown below
    1. C:\selenium-remote-control>dir
       Volume in drive C has no label.
       Volume Serial Number is 8496-7482
       Directory of C:\selenium-remote-control
      08/02/2010  11:35 AM    <DIR>          .
      08/02/2010  11:35 AM    <DIR>          ..
      08/02/2010  11:34 AM               224 README.txt
      08/02/2010  11:34 AM    <DIR>          selenium-dotnet-client-driver-1.0.1
      08/02/2010  11:34 AM    <DIR>          selenium-java-client-driver-1.0.1
      08/02/2010  11:34 AM    <DIR>          selenium-perl-client-driver-1.0.1
      08/02/2010  11:34 AM    <DIR>          selenium-php-client-driver-1.0.1
      08/03/2010  02:54 PM    <DIR>          selenium-python-client-driver-1.0.1
      08/02/2010  11:34 AM    <DIR>          selenium-ruby-client-driver-1.0.1
      08/02/2010  11:35 AM    <DIR>          selenium-server-1.0.3
  2.  You can now start the Selenium RC server
    1. C:\selenium-remote-control>java -jar C:\selenium-remote-control\selenium-server-1.0.3\selenium-server.jar
    2. The above is run with bare minimum options. If you need (it's a good practice), redirect the following output to a file by using the '-log <filename>' option.
      16:06:12.999 INFO - Java: Sun Microsystems Inc. 17.0-b16
      16:06:12.999 INFO - OS: Windows XP 5.1 x86
      16:06:13.049 INFO - v2.0 [a2], with Core v2.0 [a2]
      16:06:13.429 INFO - RemoteWebDriver instances should connect to: http://127.0.0.1:4444/wd/hub
      16:06:13.439 INFO - Version Jetty/5.1.x
      16:06:13.439 INFO - Started HttpContext[/selenium-server/driver,/selenium-server/driver]
      16:06:13.450 INFO - Started HttpContext[/selenium-server,/selenium-server]
      16:06:13.450 INFO - Started HttpContext[/,/]
      16:06:13.640 INFO - Started org.openqa.jetty.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler@194ca6c
      16:06:13.640 INFO - Started HttpContext[/wd,/wd]
      16:06:13.670 INFO - Started SocketListener on 0.0.0.0:4444
      16:06:13.680 INFO - Started org.openqa.jetty.jetty.Server@c40c80
  3. Now start your firefox browser
  4. Launch Tools -> Selenium IDE. Notice a small window opens up. Selenium IDE starts in recording mode by default.
  5. Type in www.google.com in your browser, enter a search term and hit search button.
  6. Notice that all these actions and the values entered are recorded in the Selenium IDE window
  7. You can now save the script and click the Green button to replay the script
Note that by default Selenium stores your tests in plain HTML tables.

At this point you actually don't need Selenium RC to run the test you recorded using Selenium IDE. If it is a static page and does not involve any dynamic web content generation, this should suffice. But in the real world testing of web applications, this is not so. You need to use programming capabilities to use dynamic input data from a data source (could be a csv file, config file or even database).
So using a programming language becomes a necessity to make our test automation services meaningful and worthwhile. You can use python, php, ruby, perl or java with Selenium RC to do this. I've used python and it's pretty good and easy to learn too.
I will write on using python with Selenium in another blog post.
Hope this was helpful. Here are some references that will be useful to learn how Selenium works.

Conclusion:

Indium Software is a Specialist Software Testing Services provider. Indium Software’s comprehensive suite of testing services covers Test Advisory, Functional testing and Non-Functional testing specializing in Automation testing, Digital, DevOps, Agile, Web, Mobility, IOT, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to name a few. Indium Software is helping clients globally transform their QA services function to achieve zero production defects, reduce QA cycle times up to 80% and lower overall QA costs up to 60% with its Next-Gen Testing Solutions, Modern Testing Approach, Skilled Teams and Global Delivery Model. We are also an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified company.

Indium Software – Offshore Software testing services | Software testing Companies

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top 4 challenges of non functional testing

In any software testing project, we do extensively two sorts of testing – functional testing and non practical testing. Functional testing is finished by utilizing the functional particulars gave by the customer or by utilizing the structure determinations like use cases gave by the plan group. On opposite the non functional testing is very intricate and regularly abstract instead of functional testing. Here the customer attempts to report what they anticipate from the framework regarding how quick, how effectively, how securely, and so forth. Presently in this article we will check a portion of the basic difficulties of non functional testing : 1.  Requirements are too subjective:  In numerous cases, the non functional necessities are excessively nonexclusive and subject to translation. Like individuals may state, "application must reaction immediately when the client makes a hunt" or "the application must be secure" and so forth. Presently while doing ...
Read more

Why Do We Need Performance Testing For Our Digital Innovations

With new technologies emerging every day, the way we look at things has changed completely. With one voice command, your work is done. With technologies like Siri and Alexa, the human work has come to the minimum.  There are new innovations daily, and it is just enhancing the human-machine link. Performance testing helps us to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of software, application or a computer. This process involves qualitative tests which are conducted to see the effectiveness and efficiency. Importance of Digital Transformation Going digital would not mean to add more applications on your phone or have more likes on the post that was posted on Facebook or Instagram but would mean being in touch with the ongoing and rapid changes happening in today's world. Being in touch with the rapid changes in today's world has become difficult to keep up with. Digital technology affects all spheres of business, be it the way you engage with the clients,...
Read more

What is Boundary Value Analysis Testing

Boundary Value Analysis testing is a software testing technique used to validate application functionality while processing boundary conditions. Also, we can consider that this is one of the Software Testing Techniques available in Black Box testing This is one of the most effective software testing techniques to find defects. Boundary Value Analysis Testing with Example:  We will see how Boundary Value Testing is used to test below requirement Requirement: Risk assessment team in a credit card department of a bank requires to monitor payments when each transaction of an amount greater than or equal to Rs 1, 000, 00 is made more than or equal to 2 times in a day The above requirement is developed technically as below All credit card transactions for a day are captured in a mainframe file called dataset2. Dataset above as in step 1 is loaded daily into a database table called credit card transactions A COBOL program is developed which picks up the data from database t...
Read more