I've moved from SeleniumRC to WebDriver for nearly two years. But I have to say that I haven't felt there's any obvious advantages for webdriver over rc.
Now I have 200+ test cases with C# driver against a website. But when I run them thoroughly for regression testing, I usually get 150 passed and 50+ failed/errored. After running failed test cases for the second time, many of them passed, only few of them were proven to be issues with the testing code.
As I can see it, sometimes WebDriver is really performing slowly, while I never met with such a situation when I was using SeleniumRC before.
As a result, I started to doubt the necessity to move from rc to webdriver, because it took much more time for me to verify errors and failures than before.
So my question is, are there any advantages for webdriver over rc to make it worth it to move from rc to webdriver? If so, can you please kindly tell me? Also, tell me about the disadvantages.
Selenium RC injects Javascript into the page to drive the interactions. Webdriver interacts directly with the browser. Injecting additional Javascript has disadvantages, with the Selenium HQ site stating it rather well.
While Selenium was a tremendous tool, it wasn’t without its drawbacks.
Because of its Javascript based automation engine and the security
limitations browsers apply to Javascript, different things became
impossible to do. To make things “worst”, webapps became more and more
powerful over time, using all sorts of special features new browsers
provide and making this restrictions more and more painful.
http://seleniumhq.org/docs/01_introducing_selenium.html#selenium-history
Another way to think about it is that testing a page that has had more JS added, you're not really testing the original page; you're testing a modified page.
What #OCary said.
However, the new and more powerful WebDriver has some limitations, too. Because it is a work-in-progress, it's behaviour between different versions changes slightly from time to time. Also, not nearly all intended features have been implemented yet, it will take some more time to have it stable, bug-free and fully developed. For example: the SafariDriver has just landed, the window controls are missed, you can't download files in a convenient way etc.
But a healthy development on WebDriver is better than today's non-existant development on Selenium 1 (It just won't get any better.), right?
From my experience Selenium RC is the most stable and robust web testing framework I have used. I recently started evaluating WebDriver (aka Selenium 2) for the reason that everybody says it is the future of Selenium. So far I am not impressed. Simple things (like clicking a button) do not work consistently across different browsers and require different workarounds.
I realize that there are limitations in what you can do with JavaScript, but I would not want to sacrifice the stability of my tests to get over those limitations.
Related
I have a personal need to scrape/automate-access-to my linkedin account (copy my contacts, etc), and obviously the site is too ajaxy to just use wget, urllib, etc.
I cannot use the LinkedIn API, as it happens to restrict some use cases I'm interested in.
I am proficient in Python and Javascript. I've used webdriver in the past for small scraping projects, but it was long ago enough that there's probably a similar overhead in re-learning it vs learning phantomjs.
I am not planning to run any kind of high-volume cluster-based scraping operation, this is all going to be running on my local machine at some appropriate rate limit so as not to piss off linkedin. It's mostly just for personal convenience, automation, etc.
I've heard good things about phantomjs, but I'd like to understand what if any advantage it has over webdriver (or vice versa). I guess phantomjs is "headless", meaning it doesn't actually have to run a browser, which I guess makes it easier to write command line scripts or consume fewer resources or some other property that I would love to have explained to me!
I can appreciate the argument that webscraping programs should be javascript, since that's more of a browser-native language, but would love to hear if that's a primary reason why people are using phantomjs (or one of its cousins)
I've used both Selenium and Phantom/Casper in scraping jobs, and also used both in functional testing jobs. If I was going to do what you describe I would choose CasperJS. I would choose CasperJS over PhantomJS because:
Easier to describe the flow of steps. (You have to deal with all the async callbacks when using PhantomJS directly.)
SlimerJS can be swapped in to have it use Gecko (i.e. Firefox), with no additional effort. (I don't think this will matter with LinkedIn, but PhantomJS 1.9.x is based on a fairly old WebKit, so when sites use newer HTML5 features it can sometimes fail.)
Reasons to choose CasperJS over Selenium:
The flow of steps is quite easy to describe in CasperJS.
Selenium feels more like hard work. This might be because PHP is my preferred glue language, and since Selenium 2.0, PHP has been treated as an outsider. But also it has the philosophy of only allowing actions that a user could do in the browser with keyboard and mouse. This is sometimes not flexible enough.
Selenium breaks each time Firefox gets updated, and I have to install the latest version. Irritating. (PhantomJS and SlimerJS have their browser internally, so are cleanly independent of system updates to your desktop browser.)
As you are proficient in both Python and JavaScript, I would say none of the above are killer reasons. It doesn't really matter which you choose, the effort is going to be roughly the same.
I am a novice in testing.
I am working on Linux.
I was reading about testing in headless mode and came across two things. One was X virtual frame buffer which does graphical operations in memory. So, no output is displayed. The implementation details I found in this link http://www.seleniumtests.com/2012/04/headless-tests-with-firefox-webdriver.html.
The other one that I came across was HtmlUnitDriver. This also does not open any browser while running the test. I wrote a basic sample code using HtmlUnitDriver and the assertions seem to work fine.
I understand that HtmlUnitDriver doesn't work too well with javascript. But apart from this, are there any major differences to choose one over the other?
I am going to be testing a web application that does have some abount of javascript in it.
I am a novice in this field. So, any answers, suggestions, etc. will be appreciated.
Thank you in advance
From my experience with both approaches:
HtmlUnit will in most practical cases be faster than a real browser with xvfb -- simply because it doesn't spend time rendering the pages. (A data point: 17 secs. HtmlDriver vs. 62 secs. FirefoxDriver for a specific test suite I'm using now).
It is easier to run several tests concurrently -- and it consumes a lot less resources -- using HtmlUnit. This can be very important if you have a large number of tests and you need them to finish fast (e.g. you want to follow the 10-minute-build rule).
As you said, HtmlUnit has its own quirks with JavaScript and the DOM. Not better or worse than any other browser (Firefox, Safari, IE, Chrome, ... -- they all have their own quirks), but one on which it is very questionable to spend time fixing bugs. I also find such bugs very difficult to diagnose, but that may be only my ignorance.
One advantage of real browsers + xvfb is that you can always use the exact same tests without xvfb and see what's going on -- possibly even use a console to run some JavaScript to diagnose issues. I sometimes feel quite blind when working with HtmlUnit, and because of above-mentioned quirks you can't always use the same exact tests code in both environments.
So, in summary, unless total test duration is important and you're ready to spend some time fighting HtmlUnit, it's just easier to go with a regular browser + xvfb.
I also like using xvnc, which has the added benefit of allowing you to connect to the screen of a running test and see what's going on (not sure whether you can do that with xvfb).
I am new to Selenium and have spent about a week using IDE. So far, so good. However, some other parts of our application involve heavy drag-n-drop capabilities, and I'm not so sure about that...which brings me to my question...what type of specific things can WebDriver do that the IDE cannot do? I read the Selenium front page, and know that WebDriver can make more "robust" tests, but I'm not entirely clear what robust means in this context? Longer? More capabilities?
What I'm looking for is what type of particular tests could be run with WebDriver that couldn't be run in the IDE? And are any of them related to drag-n-drop? This will inform my decision about whether to keep on using the IDE or to switch over. I think it's better to use something from the beginning than to create a lot of tests and then switch over.
Thanks much in advance.
You can use the full features of your chosen language. For example, using the IDE you are stuck to using the IDE's API, however if you choose to use the WebDriver explicitly you can combine it with C# and use C#'s full features (such as LINQ).
A few of the IDE commands are not directly converted with the WebDriver.
You can integrate a pure WebDriver test into a CI (Continuous Integration) server.
It is not limited to just Firefox, whereas the IDE is (since the IDE is only available in Firefox).
You can improve and extend Selenium more easily. For example using Extension methods and inheritance. (For instance, extending Selenium so that whenever it cannot find an element, it takes a screenshot of the page)
It will be more robust, as the IDE will not always give you the most reliable way of finding an element. For instance, if the element you require is nested within a table, the XPath that the IDE will give you will infer directly to specific table rows and cells.
For instance something like this:
//table[1]/tr[1]/td[2]/table[1]/tr[1]/td[3]/a[1]/b
Is not the most reliable XPath in the world. Those without any knowledge of XPath or automated testing or how Selenium works, will stick with that and then waste hours figuring out why this XPath query fails. Others will change it, and just use the XPath as a base query.
The IDE should usually be used for those who don't have much programming knowledge (e.g some testers), if you want your developers and/or the test developer's to use Selenium, go directly with the WebDriver. It will feel more like programming with a fully-fledged language instead of scripting (after all, the scripts that the IDE generates are purely HTML files). The idea is generally for those who don't have much programming knowledge to simply hit 'play' and let Selenium do the work.
Drag-and-drop are applicable within the IDE and WebDriver.
Most of the development in Selenium (it seems) goes into extending the WebDriver code, the IDE may be left behind in some new features.
Using WebDriver directly, you can also use the full features of a unit testing framework (usually NUnit with C# or Junit/TestNG for Java). This allows things like repeating tests for each browser (i.e repeating tests in Chrome, Firefox and IE) or defining certain logic before and after tests (i.e adding user memberships, creating users, setting up other test data).
Fellow developers might be more inclined to help out if it is using a programming language as opposed to a scripting language (ie WebDriver is programmed in a programming language, the IDE scripts are just HTML files). Putting it in your solution and having it as part of the nightly build process helps to ensure developers help out in your tests progression.
Thinking about it, another example is a bug is fixed but introduces a new bug which causes your test to fail. Who's responsibility is it to fix the test? You or them? Having it use WebDriver directly, they can just look up the source code to Selenium and figure out the API usage themselves. With the IDE, it is literally a HTML file that calls some javascipt. Not much documentation on it.
To sum up: if you don't have much programming experience, either learn a language and use WebDriver with it directly, or just stick with the IDE. Either will do the job.
IDE cannot be used for serious automation. I would sussgest learn the API and use it with Java/C#/Python. It will help you churn out some good automation and will payback really well.
You can always use the IDE to learn how the code is generated.
Hi I want differences between architectures of selenium RC and webDriver.
I read lot of functional differences but did not find anything for architecture differences.
If anyone can send/post links of differences that will really appriciate.
Thanks in advance
The difference is quite substantial.
Selenium RC works only using JavaScript for its every command. That means that everything you write is eventually translated into Javascript and run in the browser. This approach has several pros and cons - it should work the same way in every browser, but is limited to "same origin policy" and to JavaScript limitations.
http://seleniumhq.org/docs/05_selenium_rc.html#how-selenium-rc-works
WebDriver actually uses each browser's own and native API's to work with them. That means that it sometimes needs direct help from browser development team, sometimes fails on a new browser version release, sometimes behaves slightly differently on different browsers (but hey, on IE, js was also not the most reliable thing), but is a much stronger tool overall. It should be faster, it should allow for much more complex work without any js limitations.
http://seleniumhq.org/docs/03_webdriver.html#how-does-webdriver-drive-the-browser-compared-to-selenium-rc
Note that while Selenium RC has been oficially deprecated, the WebDriver is now being developed rapidly and it still suffers from several child-illnesses and is not in its full strength. That said, using WebDriver, you can do anything Selenium RC can do. And sometimes more. With an occasional minor bug.
here you can Selenium Webdriver Architecture
http://qeworks.com/selenium-webdriver-architecture/
you can also find diff. between RC and webdriver below
http://qeworks.com/difference-between-selenium-rc-and-selenium-webdriver/
Though there are many advantages of Page Project Model, some of them worth mentioning are :
Simple and clear page classes with sensible method names.
You can actually give the customize names to you methods. Like above so that you need not to keep anything in mind.
Just looking into the method name gives you all idea about the capabilities of the method.
Makes tests more readable. In comparison to above commands of selenium , where in you need to add all the commands in the tests scripts . in page object model you need to put method names. The methods which you have created according to your understanding of application so these methods name are more readable and easy to understand.
Stay [DRY]
Page object model believes in the principle of Do not repeat yourself.
Good support of tests, because everything is stored in one place.
Easy creation of new tests. In fact, tests can be created by a person not knowing the features of automation tools.
As I have actually implemented it in my project so definitely there are some flaws:
All locators should be kept in page class file.
And this abstraction leads to some chaos with in the Page Class file.
So you need to implement something like key word driven on top of Page Object Model so as to fully take the advantages.
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.