1. Intro
* I’m Dave Haeffner Show of hands
* I’ve been doing QA and automated new to Selenium?
web testing for 4 years some experience with?
* Most of that time was spent at experienced?
The Motley Fool
* More recently I started my own new to programming?
consulting company and work with some experience with?
soft ware development shops to help experienced?
them with QA strategy and not sure how to answer?
implementing automated web
testing
SELENIUM BASICS
brought to you by the QA Lounge
Tuesday, September 25, 12

2. “WHAT IS SELENIUM? TELL
ME LIKE I’M 5.”
Selenium is a soft ware
robot sent from the
future to test our
soft ware.
Tuesday, September 25, 12

3. PREFACE
There are many ways to implement Selenium & a framework
I will show you one that has worked for me
There will be code involved (and opinions!)
These examples do not reflect a comprehensive QA strategy
But it’s a good start
Tuesday, September 25, 12

4. SELENIUM IDE
I debated showing you the IDE since it’s the unloved
child of the Selenium community.
But it is responsible for the wide spread success of
Selenium.
I consider it to be less of an unloved orphan and
more of a gateway drug
Tuesday, September 25, 12

5. SELENIUM IDIOMS
• Verify vs. Assert
• Location, location, location!
• ClickAndWait, and wait, and wait...
Tuesday, September 25, 12

6. LET ME EXPLAIN
• Ruby is approachable -- it can read like English
• There’s also that “standing on the shoulder of giants thing”
• RSpec is an open-source testing tool built in Ruby for Ruby
• It’s kind of a big deal
• Loads of functionality out of the box
• Quite customizable
Tuesday, September 25, 12

7. “SHUT UP AND SHOW
ME THE CODE!”
Tuesday, September 25, 12

8. COMMON ACTIONS
Name Action Sub-Action
get fetch a page
navigate same as get to, forward, back
(:id, “idtext”)
(:class, “classtext”)
(:tag_name, “tagtext”)
find_element
(:name, “nametext”) click, text
(a.k.a. “by” strategies)
(:link, “linktext”)
(:partial_link_text, “”)
(:css, “csstext”)
Tuesday, September 25, 12

9. HONORABLE MENTION
• Moving between windows and frames
• Pop-up dialogs
• Drag and Drop
• Cookies
• Changing the User Agent
Tuesday, September 25, 12

10. ASSERTIONS THRU RSPEC
Thing Action Sub-Action
include(“text”)
start_with(“text”)
end_with(“text”)
equal(expected)
should be(expected)
object
should_not be > expected
be >= expected
be <= expected
be < expected
match(/expression/)
Tuesday, September 25, 12

11. “NO REALLY,
SHUT UP AND SHOW ME
THE CODE!”
Tuesday, September 25, 12

12. PAGE OBJECT PATTERN
Create a class
Pass the session to it
Store and use it through an instance variable
Assertions done outside of the class
• Relieves many test maintenance woes
• Keeps things DRY rather than WET
• Create an object that represents a page (or component of a
page) and test against that
• If the UI changes, you change just the object, not the tests
• Also helps you make things more readable
Tuesday, September 25, 12

13. “IS THAT IT?”
Tuesday, September 25, 12

14. robot/
DIY FRAMEWORK
.rspec
Rakefile
Gemfile
art/
results.html
brains/
config.rb
page_objects/
google_search.rb
guts/
Tuesday, September 25, 12

15. FRAMEWORK CONT’D
rake robot:run
Code available at github.com/tourdedave/diy_framework
Tuesday, September 25, 12

16. RECAP
• Selenium IDE is cool in theory...
• WebDriver is cool.
• The Page Object Pattern will make you happy and successful
• Rolling your own framework is within your grasp
• And it positions you for automation success!
Tuesday, September 25, 12

17. SOME RESOURCES
• Selenium HQ (SeleniumHQ.com/docs/03_webdriver.html)
• Official Selenium Blog (SeleniumHQ.Wordpress.com)
• Ruby Selenium Bindings (http://bit.ly/seruby)
• RSpec (http://github.com/rspec)
• Why Everyone Should Be Code Literate (http://bit.ly/sauceio)
•A book to get you started (http://bit.ly/se2book)
•A self-proclaimed great resource* (QA-Lounge.com)
Tuesday, September 25, 12

18. Q&A
@TourDeDave
QA-Lounge.com
Tuesday, September 25, 12