Ever want to automate your web testing with Selenium? Usually it works well, but then there are times where it seems to be brittle and unreliable. Sometimes, your company might want to stop using this (and stop the automated test effort!). How can we prevent Selenium tests from becoming Shelfware? Selenium based tests can in fact be reliable and should actively be used in the regression test effort. Key Takeaways; Alan Ark shares techniques he uses to turn sick test automation codebases into a reliable workhorse. Techniques include AJAX-proofing, use of the Page Object model, and pop-up handling.

1. XBOSoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 1
Web
Testing
with
Selenium

2. XBOSoft
Founded in 2006
Dedicated to software quality
Software QA Consulting
Software Testing
Offices in San Francisco, Beijing and Amsterdam
XBOSoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2

3. House Rules
Everyone except the speakers are muted
Questions via the gotowebinar control on the right side of your screen or
through Twitter @XBOSoft
Questions can be asked throughout the webinar - we’ll try to answer them
at the end.
You will receive info on recording after the webinar
XBOSoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 3

4. Meet Our Speakers
• VP Sales & Marketing at XBOSoft
• 15 years Marketing and Sales in High Tech
• Love the outdoors, reading and parenthood
XBOSoft, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 4
Steve Gohre
• Sr. Software Developer in Test at Eid Passport
• Over 20 years of test automation experience
• Veteran speaker
• Quality Week 1999
• PNSQC 2007
• PNSQC 2011
• PNSQC 2013
• Better Software West 2015 (June)
• Enjoys golf and fine wine
Alan Ark
Sabrina Gasson
• Marketing Manager of XBOSoft
• Emails you all regularly to join our
industry hot topic webinars
• And invites you all to download our latest
trends in software testing whitepapers.

5. Who is Alan Ark?
Sr. Software Developer in Test at Eid Passport in
Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
Over 20 years of automated testing experience
Over 8 years with Watir
About a year with Selenium

6. Agenda
Intro on Selenium
Tips and Tricks
Pitfalls to avoid
Ask questions as we go!

7. Watir?
Web Application Testing in Ruby
A different open source project that drives
browsers for test automation

8. What is Selenium?
A tool to automate browsers!
Quick regression testing across many browsers
Automate web based admin tasks

9. Why Selenium over Watir?
Choice
More widely supported
More bindings available

10. Regression testing!
Repetitive test efforts
Reproducible tests across many browsers
Time consuming

11. Automation of web based admin
tasks!
Creation of data
Reading of records on the browser
Updating of content
Deletion of records

12. What version of Selenium?
Don’t use Selenium 1.0 - Selenium IDE
Recorder is deprecated
Javascript Injection to drive a browser
Selenium 2 uses WebDriver
http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/

13. WebDriver?
A platform and language-neutral interface that
allows programs or scripts to introspect into,
and control the behaviour of, a web browser
http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-webdriver-
20130117/

14. How do I start?
Pick a language!
Java
C#
python
ruby
others supported as well

15. Pick your browser/driver
Firefox
Chrome
IE
Safari
many more!

16. How do I interact with the
browser?
Dev tools are built-in to browsers
Inspect the HTML to glean the locators to use
var inputElement =
driver.FindElement(By.Name("myButton"));
inputElement.Click();

17. Built-in locators
Use these if you can
driver.FindElement(By.Name("myName"));
driver.FindElement(By.Id("myId"));
driver.FindElement(By.ClassName("myClass"));
others as well

18. XPath vs. CSS
XPath
//div[. ='Some Text of the Div']
CSS
table[id='tblBadgeInfo'] thead td
Speed considerations?

19. Tips to avoid headaches….
GUI based tests sometimes thought of as fragile,
brittle or unreliable
How to prevent your Selenium automation from
becoming shelfware

20. Use unique locators
Very difficult if locators are not unique
Avoid using index numbers
Ask for some name/id/class on UI elements from
the development team

21. Do not use hard coded sleeps
Makes test scripts brittle when run on different
environments.
Thread.Sleep(5000); // Sleep for 5 seconds
button.Click();

22. Use a polling wait
Be flexible and return as soon as possible but
ignore exceptions

23. Use WebDriverWait
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver,
TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));
IWebElement myDynamicElement =
wait.Until<IWebElement>((d) =>
{
return
d.FindElement(By.Id("myButtonId"));
});

24. Use ExpectedConditions
Convenience methods on things that are
checked often. Use these with
WebDriverWait.
http://selenium.googlecode.com/git/docs/api/d
otnet/html/AllMembers_T_OpenQA_Seleniu
m_Support_UI_ExpectedConditions.htm

25. Use Page Objects
Isolate UI elements from the test cases
If the UI changes, your tests only need to be
modified in a single place - the Page Object
that defines the UI
Reduces duplicate code

26. Login Page Example

27. Login Page Object
class LoginPage : BasePage {
public LoginPage() {}
public void Login(string username,string password) {
var nameElement = driver.FindElement(By.Name("username"));
nameElement .SendKeys(username);
var passElement = driver.FindElement(By.Name("password"));
passElement .SendKeys(password);
var submitButton = driver.FindElement(By.Name("submit"));
submitButton.Click();
}
}

28. Login Test Case
var loginPage = new LoginPage();
loginPage.Login("user","pass");

29. Verify your assumptions….
Are you where you think you are?
Verify page elements on transitions
Clicked links
Form submission

30. Be Generous with your logging
Overlogging is better than underlogging
Easier to examine output files to see where
failures are occurring
Especially true for remote execution
Use logging to get a trail on most events

31. Things I like to log
URL of the page
Timestamp
Values used on assertions
Values used on comparators
Values used on loops

32. IE Considerations
Sometimes click appears to do “nothing”
Use SendKeys instead of Click
https://www.google.com/webhp?#safe=off&q=i
e+click+selenium

33. SendKeys Code
Instead of
button.Click();
Use
button.SendKeys(Keys.Enter);

34. Handling Frames
Be sure to set the focus to the frame hosting
your elements.
IWebElement mainFrame =
driver.FindElement(By.Name("MainFrame"));
driver.SwitchTo().Frame(mainFrame);

35. Handling Dialogs
Javascript alerts
Javascript confirm
Javascript prompts

36. Example code
try {
driver.SwitchTo().Alert();
return true;
}
catch (NoAlertPresentException) {
// Modal dialog not displayed
return false;
}

37. Handling Popup windows
var windowHandles = driver.WindowHandles;
// if handle 0 is the main window then handle 1 is the popup,
otherwise the popup is handle 0
var popUp = (windowHandles[0] == mainWindowHandle ?
windowHandles[1] : windowHandles[0]);
driver.SwitchTo().Window(popUp);
<do stuff>
driver.SwitchTo().Window(mainWindowHandle );

38. Not the only answer...
Sometimes Selenium can’t do the job.
AutoIt can be used as a fall-back.
https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/

39. Browser login prompts

40. Advanced Topics
Use with Continuous Integration tools
Remote control of tests
Selenium Grid

41. Summary
Instrument your framework correctly and
Selenium tests can be very good for you
Don’t be discouraged. Try different things.
Investigate to see what Selenium can do for you

42. Contact Info
Email: aark@eidpassport.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arkie
Come visit: http://bscwest.techwell.com/

43. Post your questions on Twitter and we'll answer them @XBOSoft
Join us to keep updated on all our webinars, reports and whitepapers:
facebook.com/xbosoft
+xbosoft
linkedin.com/company/xbosoft
We post regularly on our blog – check us out! http://xbosoft.com/software-quality-blog/
Why not download our free Whitepapers, available here: http://xbosoft.com/knowledge-center/
You will receive an email with information on slides and recording. Any further queries regarding our services or ideas for
future webinars please email us! Services@xbosoft.com
Q+A
www.xbosoft.com