The document provides an overview of Selenium and its use for test automation across web, desktop, and mobile applications, highlighting various tools and features. It discusses the transition from Selenium RC to Selenium WebDriver, emphasizing improvements in performance and API design. Additionally, it covers element locating strategies, handling dynamic content, and common exceptions encountered while using Selenium.

1. SELENIUM
Test Automation and much more!

2. TESTAUTOMATIONTODAY
Web UI Test Automation
Selenium, Watir, PhantomJS, CasperJS, Sahi, QTP, SauceLabs
Native Desktop UI Automation
AutoIt, Sikuli, QTP, TestComplete
Mobile App Test Automation
MonkeyTalk, Calabash, Selendroid, Appium, EggPlant
Performance Test Automation
JMeter, Load Runner, NeoLoad, HttPerf

3. SAYHELLOTOSELENIUM!
Who am I?
A set of open source tools to interact with browser application in an automated way.
What are my tools?
Selenium IDE, Selenium 1 (RC), Selenium 2 (WebDriver)
Who are my creators?
Selenium 1 - Jason Huggins, Selenium 2 - Simon Stewart

4. SELENIUMROCKS!SAYHOW?
Limitless possibilities of using Selenium
Possible interesting uses:
Test Automation, ofcourse!
Web data scraping
Performing CRUDs on a webpage repetitively (Bulk data
creation from the UI)
As a content downloader!
Automated reply to Facebook posts?

5. HOWWASSELENIUMEARLIER??
Called as Selenium RC (Remote Control), had a server which
launches, stops and interacts with the browser.
Selenium Commands from code -> RC Server -> Javascript
commands to browser
Client libraries used HTTP GET / POST to interact with the
selenium server
Selenium Server used Selenium Core which was a set of JS
programs that were injected into the browser for executing the
commands sent.
Client libraries were in Python, Ruby, Java, .NET, PHP, Perl

6. SELENIUMRCARCHITECTURE

7. WHYEVERYBODYMOVINGTO
SELENIUM2???
Problems with Selenium RC
Explicitly start the server
No good organized API
Used Javascript Injection
Slower execution
No new enhancements. Deprecation!!
Same origin policy problem

8. WEBDRIVER
Binds natively to the browser. No Javascript injection in browser's JS Sandbox
Better object oriented API
Bindings for Java, Python, C#, Ruby, Perl, Php, JS
Significantly fewer calls than Selenium RC
Variants: ChromeDriver, FireFoxDriver, InternetExplorerDriver, OperaDriver, AndroidDriver,
IPhoneDriver, HtmlUnitDriver
Overcomes same origin policy problem
Self-contained library. No server to start explicitly.

9. WEBDRIVERARCHITECTURE

10. LEARNINGTHESEWILLMAKEUSING
SELENIUMEASIER!
HTML, CSS and Javascript from
andCodeacademy HTMLDog

11. THEDOM!!
Cross-platform, language-independent convention for representing and interacting with
objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents.
HTML is structured according to DOM and DOM of the webpage is accessed by Selenium

12. THEC#SELENIUMNAMESPACE

13. DRIVINGTHEDRIVER
Interface - IWebDriver; Implements - ISearchContext, IDisposable
Functionality - Controls the browser, Finds elements, Helps in debugging
Usage - Creating instance of a flavor of webdriver class that implements this interface
Commonly used methods - FindElement, FindElements, Manage, Navigate, Quit, Close
Commonly used properties - Title, URL

14. WEBELEMENT
Interface - IWebElement; Implements - ISearchContext
Functionality - Provides methods to identify and interact with DOM
elements on web page. Instance of it represents a HTML element.
Usage: Created using FindElement / FindElements method on driver
instance or another webelement object.
Commonly used methods: Click, SendKeys, Clear, Submit,
GetAttribute, GetCssValue
Commonly used properties: Displayed, Text, Enabled, Selected,
TagName

16. ELEMENTLOCATING
Use By class to locate elements
By class provides following static member methods:
CssSelector
ClassName
Id
XPath
TagName
LinkText
PartialLinkText
Name
Subclass the By class to build your own locating mechanism. Eg: ByIdOrName

17. LOCATINGBYID
Id is the King!
W3C standards state Ids should be unique.
Independent from the type of element.
Developers usually give ids to elements which contain dynamic
elements. Benefit!
If your developer doesn't add ids, convince him to do so!

18. LOCATINGBYCSS/XPATHSELECTORS
css prefered over xpath.
xpath engines different for different browsers.
xpath tend to become complex and difficult to read.
xpath useful when you want to fetch parent element or
find element by text.

19. USEFULLINKSFORXPATHANDCSS
SELECTORS
Xpath to Css Cheat Sheet
Elemental Selenium Blog on performance benchmarks for
CSS and XPATH selectors
A stackoverflow post

20. "A good way to start a CSS or Xpath locator is to start with an
element that you know is not likely to change much and use it
as an ‘anchor’ in your locator. It may have an ID or stable location
but not be the element you need to locate but is a reliable position to
search from. Your anchoring element can be above or below the
current element in the HTML tree, but most often it’s above."
How do I find the <li> ??

21. INDEXANDDESCENDANTLOCATORS
Index locators
nth-child(), nth-of-type()
Use when finding element in a list, by index
Nth-child example: p:nth-child(2)
Nth-of-type: p:nth-of-type(2)
Descendant Locators
Use when finding direct child elements of parent
CSS example: div > div > ul > li > span
Xpath example: //div/div/ul/li/span

22. COMPONENTOBJECTPATTERN
Create a single class for interacting with a widget/complex
control present frequently on different pages of the website

23. YOUNEEDTOWAITFORMR.AJAX!
AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript & XML)
Dynamic content rendered and updated with the help of
AJAX and Javascript
This calls for the need to test dynamic UI which has time
uncertainty
WebDriver handles this using Implict and Explict waiting mechanism
Link: WebDriver Wait Commands

24. COMMONEXCEPTIONS
ElementNotVisibleException : Use Javascript to make element visible
IllegalLocatorException: when By.className() is used with a compound class name.
NoSuchElementException: Use waits OR verify your locator
StaleElementReferenceException: Happens if a DOM operation happening on the page is
temporarily causing the element to be inaccessible.
public boolean retryFindClick(By by) {
boolean result = false;
int attempts = 0;
while(attempts < 2) {
try {
driver.findElement(by).click();
result = true;
break;
} catch(StaleElementException e) {
}
attempts++;
}
return result;

25. IJAVASCRIPTEXECUTOR
Used to execute javascript on webpage.
Can be used for finding elements
Performing actions like click or selecting control
Syntax:
IJavaScriptExecutor jsExec = (IJavaScriptExecutor)_driver;
_searchTextField = (IWebElement)jsExec.ExecuteScript("return document.getElementBy
_searchTextField.SendKeys(searchString);