A best of tips & tricks from the weekly Selenium tip newsletter Elemental

1. Selenium
Tips & Tricks
by Dave Haeffner
@TourDeDave

2. New to Selenium?
• Selenium Bootcamp http://bit.ly/se-bootcamp
• Selenium Guidebook http://bit.ly/se-guidebook
• Weekly Selenium Tips http://bit.ly/se-weekly-tips

3. http://ElementalSelenium.com

4. etc.
http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/

5. Headless
Benefits:
- Speed
- Maintenance
- Screenshotting

6. Headless w/ Xvfb
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/38-headless

7. Why use it?
Ideal for running small test suites on a headless machine
e.g., a Continuous Integration (CI) Server

8. NOTE
- display port collisions
- use unique values
- e.g., CI build number

10. Headless w/ GhostDriver
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/46-headless-ghostdriver

11. http://phantomjs.org/

12. Why use it?
• Faster execution times
• Also useful for a CI server
• Not limited to just Linux

13. Step 2 - Start PhantomJS w/ WebDriver flag
Step 1 - Download PhantomJS
http://phantomjs.org/download.html
Step 3 - Connect Your Test to PhantomJS
using Selenium Remote
NOTE
You can also connect PhantomJS to a Selenium Grid
http://bit.ly/ghost-driver-grid

15. Visual Testing

16. A Visual Testing Primer
• check that an application’s UI appears correctly to its users
• goal: find visual bugs before the user does
• e.g., font, layout, rendering issues
• can also be used to verify content
• e.g., charts, dashboards, etc.
• hundreds of assertions for a few lines of code
• at least 16 open source solutions available to choose from

17. Visual Testing Challenges
• Managing complexity
• False positives
• e.g., shifting content, dynamic content, typos

26. Visual Testing Write-ups
http://bit.ly/se-visual-1 Getting Started
http://bit.ly/se-visual-2 False Positives part 1
http://bit.ly/se-visual-3 False Positives part 2
http://bit.ly/se-visual-4 Add Visual Testing To Your Existing Tests
http://bit.ly/se-visual-5 Add Visual Testing To Your BDD Tests

27. Selenium Grid Resources
• http://elementalselenium.com/tips/26-cloud
• http://elementalselenium.com/tips/52-grid
• http://elementalselenium.com/tips/70-grid-extras

28. Fun with a Proxy Server

29. Selenium Browser
Proxy
Server
Application
Under
Test

31. HTTP Status Codes
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/17-retrieve-http-status-codes

32. Configuration
• Use a proxy server to capture the traffic from your
Selenium test(s)
• Find the status code for the action you’re interested
in (e.g., visiting a URL)
• Assert that the status code is what you expect

38. Blacklisting
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/66-blacklist

39. Configuration
• Use a proxy server to manipulate the traffic from
your Selenium test(s)
• Identify third-party resources that are slow to load
(which could negatively impact your tests)
• Blacklist them (e.g., make it so they don’t load)

42. Load Testing
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/68-load-testing-revisited

43. Configuration
• Use a proxy server to capture the traffic from your
Selenium test(s)
• Convert the HTTP Archive into a JMeter JMX file
• Run the new JMX file with JMeter to enact load on
your application (modify as needed)

46. Adapted from ruby-jmeter example from flood.io
https://github.com/flood-io/ruby-jmeter

49. Broken Image Checking
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/67-broken-images

50. Option 1 - Proxy Server
Option 2 - HTTP Library
Option 3 - JavaScript

51. Option 1: Proxy Server

52. Proxy Server Cont’d

53. Proxy Server Cont’d

54. Proxy Server Cont’d

55. Option 2: HTTP Library

56. HTTP Library Cont’d

57. HTTP Library Cont’d

58. Option 3: JavaScript

59. JavaScript Cont’d

60. JavaScript Cont’d

61. JavaScript Cont’d

62. Forgot Password
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/43-forgot-password

63. Configuration
• Use Selenium to trigger a forgot password workflow
(to a Gmail account) and keep the browser session
active
• Retrieve the e-mail and the password information
via the Gmail API
• Use the password information in the active
Selenium session (if applicable)

69. A/B Testing
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/12-opt-out-of-ab-tests

72. • 3 page states available
• You can identify which state you’re in because
there is different header text for each
• When you’re in the control: A/B Test Control
• For the variation: A/B Test Variation 1
• When you’re not in a test: No A/B Test
http://the-internet.herokuapp.com/abtest

73. Configuration
• You can easily opt-out of A/B tests by
• forging a cookie
• appending a query to the URL
• This way you get a known state of the page which
isn’t likely to change without your knowledge

78. File Management

79. Uploading a File

81. Workaround
• Rather than use something like AutoIt (which is a
bad idea)
• You can send the file path you want to upload into
the form input field (side-stepping the system
dialog entirely)

83. http://bit.ly/se-file-detector

84. Downloading a File
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/2-download-a-file
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/8-download-a-file-revisited
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/15-download-secure-files

85. Two approaches
• Configure Selenium to download to local disk, and
delete the file when done
• Use an HTTP library, perform a HEAD request, and
check the headers for the correct content type &
length.
Why?
• An order of magnitude faster using Selenium
• No need to download the file

86. With Selenium

87. With Selenium

90. With an HTTP library

91. With an HTTP library (for secure files)

93. Additional Output

94. Highlight Elements
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/65-highlight-elements

100. Growl Notifications
http://elementalselenium.com/tips/53-growl

105. New to Selenium?
• Selenium Bootcamp http://bit.ly/se-bootcamp
• Selenium Guidebook http://bit.ly/se-guidebook
• Weekly Selenium Tips http://bit.ly/se-weekly-tips

106. http://ElementalSelenium.com http://bit.ly/oss-es-tips

107. Get in touch
@TourDeDave
dhaeffner@gmail.com
DaveHaeffner.com