1. How To Grade Your
Selenium Tests

2. http://se.tips/getting-started-talk
http://se.tips/selenium-tips
http://se.tips/selenium-book

3. Let’s talk about tests

4. What Makes a Bad Test?
• Fails For No Good Reason
• Changes in AUT, Need to Update Test(s)
• Slow
• Unreliable
• Hard to Understand and Maintain

5. What Makes a Good Test?
• Written for BDD or xUnit test framework
• Test one thing (atomic)
• Each test can be run independently (autonomous)
• Anyone can understand what it is doing
• Group similar tests together
• Centralized setup/teardown
• Uses Page Objects

6. A Testing Rubric
(Each test starts with 100 points, deduct as necessary)
Item Belong in tests? Score
Selenium Commands No -3 per (max of -9)
Locators No -2 per (max of -8)
Selenium setup/teardown* No -20
Hard-coded sleeps No -5 per (max of -20)
Implicit wait calls No -10
Explicit Wait calls No -3
Conditionals No -5 (max of -20)
Calls to Page Objects Yes N/A
Assertion(s)* Yes N/A

7. Let’s talk about
Page Objects

8. http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PageObject.html

9. What Makes a Bad PO?
• Gigantic in size (e.g., hundreds or thousands of
lines in code)
• Over-reaching responsibility
• Contain overly complicated logic
• Return not enough or too much information to the
test (leaky abstraction)
• Assertions happening in the PO instead of the test

10. What Makes a Good PO?
• Contains State (e.g., locators)
• Contains Behavior (e.g., methods to interact with
the page)
• Returns some information about the page (e.g.,
new page object, text from the page, a boolean
result for some check, etc. — never a WebElement)
• Verifies page ready state as part of initialization
with a found Element

11. A Page Object Rubric
(Each Page Object starts with 100, deduct points as necessary)
Item Belong in POs? Score
> 200 lines of code No -5 per 50 lines over
Assertions No* -5 per (max of -20)
Hard-coded sleeps No -5 per (max of -20)
Implicit wait calls No -10
Explicit waits Yes N/A
Verify page ready state* Yes -8 if not verifying an
element
Locators* Yes N/A
http://se.tips/se-waiting-jim-evans

12. Let’s talk about locators

13. Locator Strategies
• Class
• CSS selectors
• ID
• Link Text
• Partial Link Text
• Tag Name
• XPath
Good locators are:
• unique
• descriptive
• unlikely to change
That rules a few of these out

14. Locator Strategies
• Class
• CSS selectors
• ID
• Link Text
• Partial Link Text
• Tag Name
• XPath
Good locators are:
• unique
• descriptive
• unlikely to change
That rules a few of these out

15. Locator Strategies
• Class
• CSS selectors
• ID
• Link Text
• Partial Link Text
• Tag Name
• XPath
Good locators are:
• unique
• descriptive
• unlikely to change
That rules a few of these out
Start with IDs and Classes

16. Locator Strategies
• Class
• CSS selectors
• ID
• Link Text
• Partial Link Text
• Tag Name
• XPath
Good locators are:
• unique
• descriptive
• unlikely to change
That rules a few of these out
Start with IDs and Classes
Use CSS or XPath (with care)

17. Which is better
CSS or XPath?

18. CSS vs. XPath
Benchmarks
http://se.tips/se-benchmarks

24. A Locator Rubric
(Each locator gets a grade)
Item Letter Grade E.g.,
Dynamic locators D-
User account specific
or tied to page render
Tied to page layout D
XPath: / / /
CSS: > > >, etc.
Text on the page C Link text, page copy
Reasonable traversal B
Parent to child w/in an
element node
Using semantic name B+
Input labels
(name='username')
Semantic ID A
Unique, descriptive,
unlikely to change
Non-unique locator? -2 full letter grades

25. So…

26. What’s your testing GPA?
Topic Weight
Tests 20%
Page Objects 30%
Locators 50%

27. Available in Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and C#
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https://seleniumguidebook.com