How do I use Jenkins CI with Selenium? - selenium

I'm now at the level where I am able to build my own test automation framework using TestNG, through Selenium. The next stage is for me to look at kicking off automation runs, periodically using Selenium Grid.
I've being doing some research on this, and the CI tool, Jenkins, keeps cropping up. However, there isn't anything out there (that I can find!) that will answer the questions I have on it. Any help would be much appreciated on the following:
1) Why is Jenkins used with Selenium...what does it bring to the party?
2) Can Jenkins be used in conjunction with Selenium Grid? If so, I'm just after some guidance as to how they inter-link?
Andy

See comment to your question. (new member, and I can't yet comment, so simply restating the comment as a formal answer).
As mentioned in the comment, Jenkins is simply a CI tool. As to what it brings to the party: It has some nice features and plugins. So it depends on what you want. You should just check out: http://jenkins-ci.org/
Yes. Jenkins provides several different ways to invoke. It has the ability to string build invocations together so you can even build, deploy, then start selenium grid.

Related

Does Karate.robot supports CI /CD with Bamboo and need visible desktop like Sikuli to run the script?

I used image locators to locate some desktop elements the following question came to my mind that regarding Karate. Robot.
Can desktop script run on VM using CI/CD pipeline? does it need a physical desktop?
Previously I worked on Sikuli that needed a physical desktop if I minimize then the script does not work, is it the same case with Karate. Robot?
As long as you can install Karate on the VM it should be fine. Yes, having to do an RDP session can get complicated. You will need to spend some time to figure this out, but we know teams that have done this. It is also an opportunity for you to contribute some reference material and hopefully code to the community. For example getting different resolutions to work can be a challenge.
If you use the Element.invoke() method (not documented) on elements that support that automation method (e.g. buttons) you don't need the UI to be visible.
All available information can be found in this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/65187737/143475
If you have more questions, the best option is to figure this out on your own - and report your findings back here for the benefit of others.

How to run together Cucumber and Gatling

I am new to test and during my intership, I had to look for some good tools to automate functional tests.
So I made a lot of searches and decided to use Cucumber, linked with Selenium and SoapUI.
But the fact is that another search had been made before to automate load tests and Gatling (used with Jenkins) had been chosen for that.
Then I am asking to find a solution to gather the 2 solutions but it is quite hard to find any solution about that.
The only information I catch was using Taurus to have a single configuration file.
If you have any information which you think coul help me, I would be very thankful.
The purpose and techniques used by cucumber and gatling are very different so you will probably not want to push interoperation too far.
For example, you plan to use Selenium in your cucumber steps. That would not work well with the performance testing.
If you use jvm version of cucumber, you'll be able to reuse some of the utilities, for example test builders.

Why do we use WebDriver instead of Selenium IDE?

Why can't we just record all of our test cases in Selenium IDE, export it to Java/WebDriver and run it in WebDriver with Eclipse?
I need a clear explanation as I am very much confused in using WebDriver!
And can anyone please explain why IDE recorded scripts fail in WebDriver?
why cant we just record all of our test cases in IDE, export it to java/webdriver and run it in webdriver
Great question, and here is the answer:
Selenium IDE is a Record and Playback tool, which is very easy to use, but it's very unreliable. Record and playback is typically a frowned upon in web applications. Since web applications are frequently changed, the IDE is not an ideal solution for a production environment, because of the maintenance nightmare that may arise.
Let me give you a practical example. You record your test, and you find an element with a dynamic ID. Sure we can import it into eclipse, but what happens when that test starts failing down the road? why not simply make your test agile and independent to catch these in the first place.
It also boils down to your principles of test automation. Test automation in MY opinion (and several other professionals), believe that test automation should be approached from a programming perspective. Programmers should write the tests, and maintain the tests. Ideally, your quality assurance personnel should be trained to write and maintain their own tests.
So again, back to your question, the IDE is designed to be a quick solution to automation, NOT a solution to a full regression suite.
And can anyone please explain why IDE recorded scripts fail in Webdriver?
I haven't used the IDE in a while, but the reason they fail, is because the scripts that are exported, are simply the steps, not an entire java file. This also is because Selenium IDE exportations are supposed to be agnostic when it comes to how to run your test. Say I'm a user of jUnit.. what if Selenium IDE exported it to TestNG all the time? That wouldn't be fair.. honestly i'd rather create my own tests than changing that one line every single time i create my test file.
You may read the full text of a research conducted, called Why do Record/Replay Tests
of Web Applications Break?
Why can't we just record all of our test cases in Selenium IDE, export it to Java/WebDriver and run it in WebDriver with Eclipse.
You can actually do this with Selenium IDE quite easily. Record your test case / test suite in Selenium IDE, export to "Java / JUnit 4 / Webdriver" to a .java file. This will generate a JUnit test that you can import and run from Eclipse (with the correct version of JUnit of course).
It's not 100% reliable, and you may need to make some manual changes/corrections, but in general it works pretty well. Start with a single small testcase and work from there.
Why not just record in the IDE and play the recording with WebDriver???
The IDE Does Not Know What to Wait For
Suppose Bob is performing manual checks and recording his interaction with Selenium IDE. He performs an operation that takes a while to update the GUI, and when the operation has finished, he clicks a button. Bob knows that the GUI has finished updating because a spinner that was show when the operation started is removed when the operation is finished. How is the IDE going to capture the fact that the operation must have finished before clicking on the button? (Note here this is not a case where the button is disabled until the operation is finished.) This is not a hypothetical: when you test dynamic tables (like those managed by DataTables), the user can change anything at any time.
This can be one of the reasons a sequence of commands created with the IDE would fail with WebDriver. It just does not know what to wait for.
It is possible to add waits manually in the IDE but if you are doing this, then you are no longer "just record[ing] all of our test cases". And what you are doing becomes more like writing code for WebDriver.
Users are Inefficient
Not long ago there was a Selenium question in which the user wanted to get Selenium to click on the last record in a table that had multiple pages of records. So the question was, how can I page through the table, all the way down to the last page and then click the last record? Someone (maybe me, maybe someone else) pointed out that if the table is sortable, it could be sorted in reverse order and then the Selenium code could click on the first record. That's 2 operations rather than p+1 operations: clicking p times, where p is the number of pages, plus 1 time for the click on the record.
When we write code for WebDriver, we have the opportunity to write the tests to avoid taking the scenic route to get the results we want. See the next point for the technical details as to why it matters.
Selenium Operations Can Be Costly
If the software that runs your Selenium commands is local, and your browser is local, you may not feel that Selenium operations can be costly but if you run your commands on one machine and the browser is remote, then you will notice a significant slowdown. For instance, if you spawn your browser in a Sauce Labs VM or in a BrowserStack VM to run a test suite, network delays are going to add significant time to how long it takes the suite to complete. For a complete application test suite, this can mean many minutes more.
The IDE produces a sequence of commands that each require a round-trip between the Selenium script and the browser. Each round-trip adds up. Suppose I want to check that two elements contain the same text. I'm not going to use Selenese because I don't usually use the IDE but using WebDriver code in Python, the script could be:
a = driver.find_element_by_id("a")
b = driver.find_element_by_id("b")
assert_equal(a.text, b.text)
This code requires 4 round-trips: one round-trip per find_element... and one per access to the text field. The same test could be written:
a_text, b_text = driver.execute_script("""
var a = document.getElementById("a");
var b = document.getElementById("b");
return [a.textcontent, b.textContent];
""");
assert_equal(a_text, b_text);
This needs only one round-trip. When you use the IDE to record actions, the sequence of commands is like the earlier snippet: lots of round-trips. When you write your code for WebDriver, you have the opportunity to optimize as you code.
This does not mean that the Selenium IDE has no use but I would never ever think of just recording tests with it and then playing those recordings with WebDriver.
If you are a newbie, you can actually use 80% of your IDE script as your webdriver JAVA script, u just have to slightly improvise your exported IDE script and it will work fine.
But when you start testing complex functionalities you have to learn some of the basic java methods to work it out!
I beg to differ. I see no reason in having to maintain extra code when a simple record and playback can achieve same results in a fraction of the time.
I do agree with the impl of the recorded script has to be agile. It can't just be as simple as the build in commands and one has to make it agile and even inplement their own macros (aka commands/aliases) specific to the app under test.
Still, if implemented right and with the help of few Selenium IDE plugins like flow control it becomes a breeze to maintain such complex test suits and have them played back via the HTML Runner. I've used Selenium IDE HTML scripts to fully cover complex sites and reused the same script for all responsive modes of the app.
Maintanance is simple as the IDE will help you quickly adjust a failed cmd and AJAX waits can easily be accounted for correctly by waiting for DOM content to change on the page. I'm still not convinced of this AJAX excuse for dismissing Selenium IDE.
For a Maven integration of flow controls command/aliases/macros used by Selenium IDE and Maven's SureFire test plugin see:
https://github.com/paulbors/sideflow
Feel free to use it in your product and improve as needed.
webdriver allows you to execute your test cases captured with Selenium IDE in a Selenium server or via RC to multiple servers. This includes options to integrate with Selenium-enabled providers (see link at the bottom).
For example, if you've captured your test case in IDE, you could easily integrate with your own selenium server, or a provider like Saucelabs to handle the running of your test cases in Firefox on Ubuntu, Safari on OSX and IE10 on Windows 8. As with any test case, you can run it from your IDE (Eclipse / IDEA / etc ) your builder (maven / gradle /), and / or via your CI system.
Check out https://saucelabs.com/selenium for some examples. We've also used our selenium test cases for load testing with Soasta - WebDriver allows simple IDE tests to be used in many different contexts.
Because when the complexity of your code will increase, it will be difficult for you to manage it using IDE. Maintenance of your scripts will be difficult using IDE.
Also Exporting test cases from IDE to webdriver is not 100% reliable.
Other people have said a lot of helpful answers. One thing that is missing is that if you write code instead of using the IDE you have the power to make changes to the database. It depends on the website you are testing how useful this is, but here are some useful examples I've experienced. In one case the website had multiple sections of a class. One of our tests was merging these sections into one. The IDE couldn't do this. But with webdriver we can add all of our test data into the database, perform the merge, and then remove the data from the database.
Another advantage that webdriver has is Selenium Grid. With Grid you can run your tests in parallel and on multiple browsers. This makes your testing run faster and you can more thoroughly test the code.

Automatic testing of web applications with Selenium

is there any tool out there that i can used to set-up run automatically and i was goggling and i found selenium test runner? there are so many tools out there its hard to figured out which is best
I'm using C# and using MSTest as a test framework and I'm looking forward to see if I can get a way from testing in MSTEST
any help?
This is very subjective question. Every requirement will have its own correct answer. Anyhow I will try to address few requirements and will be updating as I learn more.
If you are automating web app browser tests (sans flash player and silverlight) I would say that selenium is the way to go. There are ways to automate flash and silverlight too, but that is answer for another question.
Selenium is anyways an automation too and your choice will rather is of which test framework to select. So here are few options:
1. Integrating with CI tools:
If you want to organize your tests as segregated atomic units and want them to be integrated to some CI server (e.g. TeamCity). I will recommend using NUnit to run your selenium tests.
2. Behavioral Tests
It is a new trend in the software development and how we test our products. Using behavioral (i.e. business specification) like language. In my experience it is also a very good format to write up acceptance tests. You can use selenium with something like Nbehave or SpecFlow
3. Centralize Test management and Execution
Now this might not fit for everyone but I have found FitNesse (and its c# binding) to be very useful in maintaining and executing selenium test cases.
Please note this answer may not be right and is certainly not complete given the scope of the question. I have nevertheless tried provide few pointers.

Choosing an automated testing tool

My project is compatible only with Internet Explorer. I want the test scripts to get generated automatically as it is done in Selenium IDE.
Can i use Selenium RC to test my application? I could not use Selenium IDE as it can be used only with Mozilla Firefox.
seleniumrc works with IE. You can specify the browser and the path to it within the config file.
It can be easily integrated into night builds via ant.
stick to writing the testcase in java.
Selenium RC and Selenium Grid are both really good at running tests against IE. You can see all the browsers that are supported by Selenium here and Selenium is Designed to write for one browser and work in the rest. THere are a few little quirks that wont work in every browser but 99% of the time it will.
Selenium RC works with IE, but is very buggy with IE 6 (to the point of being unusable). Generating the scripts is not trivial and there are many methods of doing it. We have created a Firefox extension that examines objects via introspection to make click recording easy. There are many options out there but your best bet is to write your tests with Firefox/Firebug (or Chrome). They will make object location much simpler and if you are careful the locator strings should still work in IE.
There could be two answer to you question:
Besides Selenium, though it has ample of advantages, I am reading about another tool which uses same API which Selenium use. The only changes in API I have seen so far is it reduces the complexity of functions thus making it more easier and simpler for user who is learning.
The tool is called 'Helium' and it has 50% (and more) less complex functions and code as Selenium has.
The only problem with this tool is it is paid tool for learning purpose and for implementing not-so-big scale project you can use it. But yeah after some time its gonna cost you.
I have implemented some code on Helium. Please let me know , if you face any issue initially or you are thinking to implement it.
Other being, you can use Selenium Builder(http://khyatisehgal.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/selenium-builder-exporting-and-execution/) which is an advanced form of Selenium IDE. It imports your command in different languages and does work more effectively and efficiently as Selenium IDE does(http://khyatisehgal.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/selenium-builder/)
Please let me know , if you have any doubt in any of the tool.
I know Watin is compatible with IE and Firefox. If you want to generate the test code you can use the Watin Test Recorder
This of course is implying that you are using .Net
... Or you could just use the .net bindings that comes along with the latest couple of versions, then you can just run 'em through nUnit.
For ex. Selenium IDE users Katalon Recorder might be a good match. Supports different browsers.