Ept Computing | www.eptcomputing.com

Selenium in real world projects

Automated testing of web applications

Martin Kleppmann

Deploying anew release

http://flickr.com/photos/josa/124264708/ (creative commons)

http://flickr.com/photos/dennissylvesterhurd/200001422/ (creative commons)

Selenium

Unit testing

Model-View-Controller

Controller

View

Model DB

Request

Response

Client

Build cycle

Deploy to staging server

Migrate staging database

Fill database with example data

Run Selenium scripts

Run unit/model tests

Checkout latest version

Notify us of outcome

10 m

ins

Render lots of views: wget -r

wget -r

Unit testingController

View

Model DB

Request

Response

Client

Model-View-Controller

Seleniumtesting

Functional stack

Rendering on screen

DOM (Document tree)

HTML

HTTP

Web framework

Database

Selenium

wget -r

Model test

Sample script# User is not logged in. Searches for auction and chooses it in the listingselenium.type "search_query", "selenium"selenium.click "commit"

selenium.click "link=Selenium test auction, single lot, normal+buy now"

# User places a bid of 12 pounds (below the reserve price)selenium.type "bid_max_price_vatted", "12"selenium.click "bid_submit"

# User logs in as Adalbertselenium.type "login", "adalbert"selenium.type "password", "asdf"selenium.click "commit"

# Bid confirmation pageselenium.click "bid_submit"

# Redirected to auction page - check Adalbert is losingassert selenium.is_text_present("You are losing your bid on this auction")assert selenium.is_text_present("below the seller's reserve price")

selenium.wait_for_page_to_load "30000"

selenium.wait_for_page_to_load "30000"

selenium.wait_for_page_to_load "30000"

selenium.wait_for_page_to_load "30000"

selenium.wait_for_page_to_load "30000"

Demo

Selenium strong points

• Simple and powerful DOM-level testing

• Fairly stable – ok for continuous integration

• Ajax-heavy apps (cross-browser issues)

• Testing typical user flows

• Good fit with Agile et al.

• Open Source

Selenium weak points

• Fiddly setup, platform maintenance

• Tedious error diagnosis

• Valid UI changes may break test

• Rendering tests limited

• Interaction with Flash

• Slow; concurrency problematic

• Heavily dependent on state – generate data

The future

• “Selenium on demand” service – “rent a web browser”, large choice of platforms

• Acceptance testing; testing impact of ads

• Memory leak detection

• Access to email in tests

• etc...