Selenium IDE skips certain fields - selenium

I'm using Selenium IDE to test our website/application. I have noticed that there are specific fields on which Selenium gets stuck. At any test speed, when Selenium gets to that field in the testing it gives out the error that it cannot find the ID. But then I double click on the test line it then goes through. In other words, Selenium IDE can find the ID when I double click on the test line, but not when it is automatic.
Moreover, it is always with the same specific fields. 95% it finds, but a few it gets stuck on in automatic mode.
Also, something similar. I have a specific page where you type data into a series of textboxes. For those specific textboxes it always skips a few of them when in automatic mode. No problem when I double click it. Only when automatic. But all other textboses are fine.
And this occurs even at the slowest speed.
Thank you.

Related

Selenium xUnit not working consistently with IE

I'm creating tests using Visual Studio/Selenium/xUnit and I've just come across a command that doesn't work in IE. I have a screen with a list of items, each with a checkbox to it's left and I need to check that checkbox and then click on Save. I've tried CSSSelector and XPath and neither works. The command executes but neither the checkbox nor the Save button is clicked. If I run the same test in FireFox it works perfectly.
This is the first test I've written (of maybe 25) that doesn't work in IE. Anyone else have this problem? Know of a workaround (other than just test in FireFox)? We need to test in IE since that's what most of our customers have installed.
It appears that this only doesn't work while debugging (stepping through the code). If I just run it it seems to work.

Funcunit - why does the speed and reliability of my tests differ depending on whether the test is being run in the active tab in Chrome?

I'm trying out FuncUnit with a simple login/logout script for an app, using Chrome on Windows 7. I've noticed that both the speed and reliability of the test differ depending on if the test is running in the currently selected tab in Chrome.
If the tab isn't selected, the test runs quickly and without error. If the tab is selected, text is typed slowly and sometimes incompletely (so only half the password will be typed before the submit button is clicked), clearly visible elements fail to be found and the test has about a 50% success rate.
Am I missing something here? It's proving less reliable than even QTP unless I deliberately deselect the loaded tab and I'm dubious about any automated test that needs user interaction to pass reliably.
Turned out to be a Chrome version specific issue

Selenium IDE wait for button to be enabled

I'm testing a reasonably complex web application. I can get selenium to get things to the point where a button appears on the screen.
I want selenium to click that button after it appears. But it's not enough to use waitForElementPresent because when the button appears, it is disabled for a split second.
I need selenium to actually wait until the button is clickable before trying to click it.
I'm having no luck even trying to find out if this is possible within the IDE.
Thanks for any assistance!
It's worth re-iterating, right now I am using the IDE only. For now....
I had the same issue with Selenium IDE. I was looking for an equivalent to the ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable method in Selenium.
Using Selenium IDE, the following seems to work for testing an form submit input which is disabled using the disabled attribute. YMMV. Adapted as needed.
Add this Selenium IDE command before the click/clickAndWait/submit/submitAndWait command:
Command: waitForCssCount
Target: #submit-button[disabled="disabled"]
Value: 0
This css selector matches an element with id submit-button which has a disabled attribute set to 'disabled'. This command will wait until there 0 occurrences, i.e. the button is no longer disabled.
There is also a waitForXpathCount command available if you prefer to use a Xpath expression rather than a CSS selector.
Note: During testing i've noticed Selenium IDE being a little flaky and doesn't always reliably wait even with this waitForCssCount. YMMV.
I would really recommend you moving over to using webdriver 'proper', automating a complex app via just the IDE is going to cause you to end up in a mess eventually. However that is not your question and I have preached enough...
You have a few options, one might be that you get away with changing from waitForElementPresent to waitForVisible as element present just checks that the element exists on the page.
The next simplest change of that does not work is to hard code a wait into your script, hard coded waits are typically poor practice but you may get away with it if this is just a quick and dirty thing, just use the pause command (remember this takes time in milliseconds not seconds).
The last option is to use the more advanced feature waitForCondition which takes in a piece of javascript to evaluate, with this can you do extra checks on the element in question that can check for any property that identified it as ready to click.
I have seen that there is a waitForVisible command. You might want to try it.
Waiting for the DOM to load the element (waitForElementPresent) and the loaded element actually becoming visible (waitForVisible) could be two different things.
You could just use waitForElementNotPresent and give the button CSS with the disabled attribute. If the disabled attribute does not exist, the button is active, so there you have your code.
Here is the example that I used for Selenium IDE:
Command | Target | Value
waitForElementNotPresent | css= input[disabled=""]|
Your CSS can differ from your code, like having disabled="disabled" as a state, but the principle remains the same.
Using a CSS selector, I was able to use the not pseudo-selector in combination with wait for element visible.
wait for element visible
css=.btn.btn-primary:not([disabled=disabled])

Why are Selenium IDE playback controls inactive? (How can I run recorded tests?)

I started learning how to use Selenium today. I have never used it before. I downloaded the Selenium IDE (1.0.10) plugin for FireFox (3.5.16). The way it's behaving is not matching up to the docs.
When I click the record button and perform actions in my browser, nothing happens in the IDE (nothing is recorded). (Actually, initially it did record, but now it doesn't) I tried restarting FireFox and that had no effect.
Also, the main controls are now inactive. I've included a screen shot to show what I mean by that. The controls remain inactive even it I click or double click on the name of a test case in the panel on the left.
And one final question -- it appears that a Selenium test case mentions Chrome in its default configuration even though the docs say you can only record tests using FireFox. Should I do anything about that?
If anyone can shed light on any of the above mysteries I would appreciate it. Thanks!
UPDATE
I restarted FireFox again and now it's recording actions, but the controls are still greyed-out as in the screenshot, so I can't play back the test.
The issue is that you are not in the HTML runner mode. The IDE has no concept of ruby or python or c# or Java. That is up to plugins which just essentially do a find an replace.
*chrome means Firefox Chrome. Something that has been around for a lot longer than Google Chrome the browser. It means use the browser chrome which removes a couple sandboxing issues.
If you want to play back the tests you can't go out of the table mode otherwise the IDE won't understand what to do. The code in the screenshot should be stored in a .rb file and that should be executed.
Let me try to unravel mysteries -
As soon as you launch the IDE it would be in recording mode. Do you see last Red button which is enabled.
IDE Tests can be executed only when in the selenese/html format (aka table format). I guess you have changed the format to ruby (I guess so), from Option > Format.
To be able to execute tests change it back to html from option > Format > HTML
Take my words, IDE is only and only for firefox

Some mouse clicks don't register in Selenium

I've got a rather Javascript-heavy page with lots of contents generated via AJAX or other scripts. On some of these elements Selenium can record mouse clicks, while on others it ignores them. I haven't found any correlation. Perhaps there are some known common scenarios where Selenium cannot intercept mouse clicks?
Unfortunately not all clicks in Selenium are equal. Some are mouseDown and MouseUp or a variation on that. I would play around with that to get your app working.
Unfortunately Selenium IDE has been misrepresented. It is a Record/Tweak/Playback tool not a record/playback tool.
There's no list of actions that are unreliable. In my experience there's no pattern to which elements work, but it's consistent throughout executions of the test. In case you were thinking about it, playing around with locators or UI-Elements is very unlikely to improve your results.
I recently had a situation with a number of dropdown menus, all implemented in the same way, on multiple different pages. On certain pages, dropdown #2 and #3 wouldn't work, yet on other pages they would work, but dropdowns #1 and #2 wouldn't.
As has already been pointed out, the best thing to do is stop thinking about Selenium IDE as a record-playback tool.
On a sidenote, you may be asking this question for a similar reason I was, which was wanting to use Selenium IDE as a frontend for teammates without Selenium programming experience to create tests with, then one thing I did find helpful was extending the Selenium IDE by adding a Command Builder, which allows you to control what appears in the right-click menu when using the IDE.
This means you can press record, go about recording your test as normal while keeping an eye on what has been recorded. Once you see Selenium IDE has failed to record an action, you can just right-click the element and the action you wanted to record will be easily available.
Not a solution to your original question, but it's helped me out. It's very simple to write an extension to the right-click menu, there's some really good examples on this Selenium website.
I'm a 100% selenium noob, but I had the same problem and solved it through the following workaround:
Right-click the to-be-clicked item
Choose a random command that has the entire locator text, e.g. assertText //div[2]/div[5]/table/tbody/tr[1]/td[1]/div IR or something. Look inside "Show all available commands" too.
In the Selenium IDE, change the command to "click" and remove the 2nd argument (the Value field; if any)
Hacky, and should be easily improved with a custom command in the right-click menu, but for now this works fine for me.
Did you try clickAt with location (0,0)? It sometimes helps
If you have assigned an ID to the element you want to click I would suggest you try a simple script, you can perform this through the IDE:
runScriptAndWait
jQuery("#yourButton").trigger('click');
I have used this in the past and it works just fine.