Concepts and need
Selenium RC (Remote Control) is a test tool that allows you to write automated web application UI tests in any programming language against any HTTP website using any mainstream JavaScript-enabled browser.
Selenium RC comes in two parts –
- A server that automatically launches and kills browsers, and acts as an HTTP proxy for web requests from them.
- Client libraries for your favorite computer language.
Here is a simplified architectural representation…
Selenium Remote Control is great for testing complex AJAX-based web user interfaces under a Continuous Integration system. It is also an ideal solution for users of Selenium IDE who want to write tests in a more expressive programming language than the Selenese HTML table format.
Selenium RC Server
Selenium Server receives Selenium commands from test program, interprets them, and reports back to program the results of running those tests.
The RC server bundles Selenium Core and automatically injects it into the browser. This occurs when test program opens the browser (using a client library API function). Selenium-Core is a JavaScript program, actually a set of JavaScript functions which interprets and executes Selenese commands using the browser’s built-in JavaScript interpreter.
The Server receives the Selenese commands from test program using simple HTTP GET/POST requests. This means you can use any programming language that can send HTTP requests to automate Selenium tests on the browser.
Client Libraries
The client libraries provide the programming support that allows you to run Selenium commands from a program of own design. There is a different client library for each supported language. A Selenium client library provides a programming interface (API), i.e., a set of functions, which run Selenium commands from own program. Within each interface, there is a programming function that supports each Selenese command.
The client library takes a Selenese command and passes it to the Selenium Server for processing a specific action or test against the application under test (AUT). The client library also receives the result of that command and passes it back to program. program can receive the result and store it into a program variable and report it as a success or failure, or possibly take corrective action if it was an unexpected error.
So to create a test program, you simply write a program that runs a set of Selenium commands using a client library API. And, optionally, if you already have a Selenese test script created in the Selenium-IDE, you can generate the Selenium RC code. The Selenium-IDE can translate (using its Export menu item) its Selenium commands into a client-driver’s API function calls. See the Selenium-IDE chapter for specifics on exporting RC code from Selenium-IDE.
