Selenium
Browser-Based-Testing for everyone

The Part for the
Consultants

Who, Why?
•All the cool kids (Google,
local.ch, etc.)
•Automatically test what the
user ends up with

Three States
of a System

The Bad
The Unknown
The Good

Goal

Goal
Transform requirements to
simple tests

Goal
Collect Tests that
correspond with your use
cases

Goal
Run these tests over and
over

Selenium IDE

Selenium IDE
Think

Selenium IDE
Think
Record

Selenium IDE
Think
Record
Play

Demo

Next Steps
•Download Selenium IDE
•http://seleniumhq.org/
download/
•Test

The Part for the
Nerds

Overview
•Local Tests using IDE
•Local Tests using RC
•Test on Server using RC

Server
Windows
Solaris
OS X
Linux
Firefox 2 / 3
Opera 8 / 9
IE 7 / 8
Safari 2 / 3

Server
java -jar selenium-
server.jar

Client Libs
•C#, Java, Perl, PHP,
Python, Ruby
browser = new DefaultSelenium(...)
browser.open(‘http://localhost’)

Testing
Frameworks
NUnit
JUnit
unittest
Test::Unit
TestNG
RSpec
the framework you wrote
by yourself cause you were bored
the other day

Example (Java)
public class GoogleTest extends TestCase {
private Selenium browser;
public void setUp() {
browser = new DefaultSelenium(\"localhost\",
4444, \"*firefox\", \"http://www.google.com\");
browser.start();
}
public void testGoogle() {
browser.open(\"http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en\");
browser.type(\"q\", \"hello world\");
browser.click(\"btnG\");
browser.waitForPageToLoad(\"5000\");
assertEquals(\"hello world - Google Search\", browser.getTitle());
}
public void tearDown() {
browser.stop();
}
}

Don’t use the
default Xpaths.
Seriously

•Proper, meaningful div
classes
•correct IDs
•//body/div[2]/div/div[1]...

Integrate JS Tests
•JS Framework (YUI, etc...)
•Dedicated JS Testsite
•Selenium checks Testsite
browser.verifyTextPresent(‘Failed: 0’)

Integrate Backend
Verifications
•Your language
•Your testing Framework

Integrate Backend
Verifications
•Your language
•Your testing Framework
Why wouldn’t you mix in
some other tests?

Integrate Backend
Verifications
browser.loginUser(‘mike’)
backend.isUserAuthenticated(‘mike’)

Browser-Based
Tests are slow
•Yes they are
•Selenium Grid to the
rescue

It’s all messed up,
popups, crazy JS
and whatnot.
There’s no way I
can test that

Start with simple
things
browser.open(...)
browser.isTextPresent(...)
browser.click(...)

Conclusions
•Clean stuff is testable
(sounds familiar...)

Conclusions
•Proper markup is
something not only your
tests will benefit from
•RESTful is pretty

Sources / Further
Reading
• Official Website:
• http://seleniumhq.org/
• Google Techtalks on Selenium
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDb8yOM3Vpw
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-03mDiEWEg

Questions?
• reto@techbase.ch
• www.twitter.com/ret0

Credits
• Long Beach Harbor Patrol Say No Photography From a Public Sidewalk:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/3147786573/
• Red, Yellow, Green
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adampenney/2296489836/
• Student shown here. Arthur Morris leads an advanced Instructional Photo Tour
class on Morro Strand State Beach 13 Jan. 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/3195053131/
• Lit Beach
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasongriset/475057715/