Expanding Selenium | Test Suite Creation & Debugging

Selenium debugging is another important topic that we are covering. Debugging means finding and fixing errors in test case. This is a normal part of test case development. We won’t teach debugging here as most new users to Selenium will already have some basic experience with debugging. If this is new to you, we recommend you ask one of the developers in the organization.

Breakpoints and Startpoints

The IDE supports the setting of breakpoints and the ability to start and stop the running of a test case, from any point within the test case. That is, one can run up to a specific command in the middle of the test case and inspect how the test case behaves at that point. To do this, set a breakpoint on the command just before the one to be examined.

To set a breakpoint, select a command, right-click, and from the context menu select Toggle Breakpoint.

Then click the Run button to run test case from the beginning up to the breakpoint.

It is also sometimes useful to run a test case from somewhere in the middle to the end of the test case or up to a breakpoint that follows the starting point. For example, suppose test case first logs into the website and then performs a series of tests and you are trying to debug one of those tests. However, you only need to login once, but you need to keep rerunning tests as you are developing them. You can login once, then run test case from a startpoint placed after the login portion of test case. That will prevent you from having to manually logout each time you rerun test case.

To set a startpoint, select a command, right-click, and from the context menu select Set/Clear Start Point. Then click the Run button to execute the test case beginning at that startpoint.

Stepping Through a Testcase

To execute a test case one command at a time (“step through” it), follow these steps:
Start the test case running with the Run button from the toolbar.
Immediately pause the executing test case with the Pause button.
Repeatedly select the Step button.

Find Button

The Find button is used to see which UI element on the currently displayed webpage (in the browser) is used in the currently selected Selenium command. This is useful when building a locator for a command’s first parameter (see the section on locators in the Selenium Commands chapter). It can be used with any command that identifies a UI element on a webpage, i.e. click, clickAndWait, type, and certain assert and verify commands, among others.

From Table view, select any command that has a locator parameter. Click the Find button. Now look on the webpage: There should be a bright green rectangle enclosing the element specified by the locator parameter.

Page Source for Debugging

Often, when debugging a test case, you simply must look at the page source (the HTML for the webpage you’re trying to test) to determine a problem. Firefox makes this easy. Simply right-click the webpage and select ‘View->Page Source. The HTML opens in a separate window. Use its Search feature (Edit=>Find) to search for a keyword to find the HTML for the UI element you’re trying to test.

Alternatively, select just that portion of the webpage for which you want to see the source. Then right-click the webpage and select View Selection Source. In this case, the separate HTML window will contain just a small amount of source, with highlighting on the portion representing selection.

Locator Assistance

Whenever Selenium-IDE records a locator-type argument, it stores additional information which allows the user to view other possible locator-type arguments that could be used instead. This feature can be very useful for learning more about locators, and is often needed to help one build a different type of locator than the type that was recorded.

This locator assistance is presented on the Selenium-IDE window as a drop-down list accessible at the right end of the Target field (only when the Target field contains a recorded locator-type argument). Below is a snapshot showing the contents of this drop-down for one command. Note that the first column of the drop-down provides alternative locators, whereas the second column indicates the type of each alternative.

Writing a Test Suite

A test suite is a collection of test cases which is displayed in the leftmost pane in the IDE. The test suite pane can be manually opened or closed via selecting a small dot halfway down the right edge of the pane (which is the left edge of the entire Selenium-IDE window if the pane is closed).

The test suite pane will be automatically opened when an existing test suite is opened or when the user selects the New Test Case item from the File menu. In the latter case, the new test case will appear immediately below the previous test case.

Selenium-IDE also supports loading pre-existing test cases by using the File -> Add Test Case menu option. This allows you to add existing test cases to a new test suite.

A test suite file is an HTML file containing a one-column table. Each cell of each row in the <tbody> section contains a link to a test case. The example below is of a test suite containing four test cases:

<html>

<head>

<title>Sample Selenium Test Suite</title>

</head>

<body>

<thead>

<tr><td>Test Cases for De Anza A-Z Directory Links</td></tr>

</thead>

<tbody>

<tr><td><a href=”./a.html”>A Links</a></td></tr>

<tr><td><a href=”./b.html”>B Links</a></td></tr>

<tr><td><a href=”./c.html”>C Links</a></td></tr>

<tr><td><a href=”./d.html”>D Links</a></td></tr>

</tbody>

</table>

</body>

</html>

Test case files should not have to be co-located with the test suite file that invokes them. And on Mac OS and Linux systems, that is indeed the case. However, at the time of this writing, a bug prevents Windows users from being able to place the test cases elsewhere than with the test suite that invokes them

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Test Suite Creation and Debugging

Expanding Selenium | Test Suite Creation & Debugging