Portnov Computer School presents:

Selenium
Web Test Tool Training
Discover the automating power of Selenium

Presented by:
Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)

Copy Right: 2009-2011, All rights reserved by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs). Republishing requires author’s permission
3
Day

Selenium Concepts

Discover the automating power of

Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium Commands
●A command is what tells Selenium what to do.
●Selenium commands are broken down into 3

types:
●Actions – Command the browser to do
something
●Accessors – Store/retrieve data from selenium

variables
●Asserts – Verify that the browser is in a certain

state

Discover the automating power of

Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium Commands - Actions
●Actions are commands that generally manipulate the
state of the application.
●They do things like "click this link" and "select that
option".
●If an Action fails, or has an error, the execution of the
current test is stopped.
●Many Actions can be called with the "AndWait" suffix,
e.g. "clickAndWait".
●Action suffix tells Selenium that the action will cause
the browser to make a call to the server, and that
Selenium should wait for a new page to load.
Discover the automating power of
Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium Commands - Accessors
●Accessors examine the state of the
application and store the results in
variables, e.g. "storeTitle".
●They are also used to automatically

generate Assertions.

Discover the automating power of

Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium Commands - Assertions
Assertions are like Accessors, but they verify that the state of
●
the application conforms to what is expected.
Examples include "make sure the page title is X" and "verify that this
●

checkbox is checked".
All Selenium Assertions can be used in 3 modes: "assert",
●
"verify", and "waitFor".
●Example include, "assertText","verifyText" and "waitForText".
●When an "assert" fails, the test is aborted. When a "verify"
fails, the test will continue execution, logging the failure.
●This allows a single "assert" to ensure that the application is on
the correct page, followed by a bunch of "verify" assertions to test
form field values, labels, etc.
●"waitFor" commands wait for some condition to become true
(which can be useful for testing Ajax applications).
Discover the automating power of
Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium Parameters
● Two types of Selenium Parameters
●Locators – Used to find elements in html

trees
●Pattern Matchers – Used to verify values

●Lots of locator types. Some examples are:

●Id based,

●X-Path based, DOM Based

●CSS selector based

●Pattern matchers are typically exact matches

or regular expressions
Discover the automating power of
Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium Element Locators
● Element Locators tell Selenium which HTML element a
command refers to.
●Many commands require an Element Locator as the "target"
attribute.
●Examples of Element Locator's include "elementId" and
"document.forms[0].element".
●The format of a locator is: locatorType=argument.
●To locate elements use identifier, id, name, DOM, CSS, XPath,
and link. Without an explicit locator prefix, Selenium uses the
following default strategies:
●DOM, for locators starting with "document.“
●XPath, for locators starting with "//“
●identifier, otherwise

Discover the automating power of

Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium Element Filters
● Element filters can be used with a locator to refine a
list of candidate elements.
●They are currently used only in the 'name'
element-locator. Filters look much like locators, i.e.
filterType=argument
●

● Supported element-filters are:

●Based on their values match elements. It is useful
for refining a list of similarly-named toggle-buttons.
● value=patternValue
●Selects a single element based on its position in
the list (starting from zero).
● index=indexValue

Discover the automating power of

Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium String Match Patterns
● Various Pattern syntaxes are available for matching string
values:
●glob:patternValue: "Glob" is a limited regular expression
syntax. Similar to DOS command-line wildcards. In a glob pattern,
"*" represents any sequence of characters, and "?" represents any
single character. Glob patterns match against the entire string.
●regexp:regexpValue: Match a string using a
regular-expression. The full power of JavaScript
regular-expression is available.
●exact:stringValue: Match a string value exactly, without
using any wildcards.
●If no pattern prefix is specified, Selenium assumes that it's a
"glob" pattern.

Discover the automating power of

Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
Selenium Recording Problem
●Why doesn't everything get recorded?
●Not every event will be recorded by

Selenium IDE.
●Usually the ones that won't be

recorded are those that involve complex

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)
and/or AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and
XML)
●Careful while testing HTTPS events
Discover the automating power of
Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *
 Selenium Auto Complete Problem
● Why doesn't event triggered when I
select something from auto-complete
history?
●Auto-Complete does not trigger

Javascript event
●No event triggered means Selenium

IDE cannot record it

●Work Around: Manually type the input,

instead of selecting it from auto-complete

Discover the automating power of
Selenium Copyright © 2008-2011
Discover the automating power of Selenium
by Kangeyan Passoubady
Copyright © 2008-2011 by Kangeyan Passoubady (Kangs)
(Kangs) *