This is the second in a series of posts on writing integration tests for ASP .NET using the Selenium 2.0 web application testing system.
In this post, I’ll go over how to write and run C# test-cases using Selenium 2.0. I’ve also provided a base-class that contains helper methods for repetitive stuff like typing inside input fields. The base-class also speeds up the tests by re-using the same driver and preserving logins across tests.
Getting ready to write your first test-case…
Make sure your test project references the following assemblies:
- WebDriver.dll
- WebDriver.Support.dll
- Newtonsoft.Json.dll
- Ionic.Zip.dll
- Castle.Core.dll
Refer back to my first post on Selenium to learn about how to configure Selenium and where to grab these DLLs from.
Your first test-case
For the purposes of writing our test case, we will assume that we have a web application that allows a user to login, fill out a form and submit it. Below are basic HTML elements that we care about:
Login.aspx
<input type="text" id="userId" /> <input type="password" id="password" /> <input type="submit" id="btnLogin" value="Log In" />
FillForm.aspx
<input type="text" id="firstName" /> <input type="text" id="lastName" /> <input type="text" id="address1" /> <input type="text" id="city" /> <input type="text" id="state" /> <input type="submit" name="btnSubmit" value="Submit" />
Here is what our test-class would look like:
using System; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting; using OpenQA.Selenium; using OpenQA.Selenium.Firefox; namespace Web.UI.Tests { [TestClass] public class FillFormIntegrationTest { public static string BaseUrl = "http://localhost:8080"; // the max. time to wait before timing out. public const int TimeOut = 30; [TestMethod] public void CanFillAndSubmitFormAfterLogin() { var driver = new FirefoxDriver(); // we need to setup implicit wait times so that selenium waits for some time and // re-checks if an element isn't found. // This is useful to ensure that a page gets fully loaded before selenium tries to look for stuff. driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitlyWait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(TimeOut)); driver.Navigate().GoToUrl(BaseUrl + "/Login.aspx"); driver.FindElement(By.Id("userId")).SendKeys("testUser"); driver.FindElement(By.Id("password")).SendKeys("foobar"); driver.FindElement(By.Id("btnLogin")).Click(); Assert.AreEqual("Fill out form", driver.Title); driver.FindElement(By.Id("firstName")).SendKeys("User"); driver.FindElement(By.Id("lastName")).SendKeys("One"); driver.FindElement(By.Id("address1")).SendKeys("99 Test Street"); driver.FindElement(By.Id("city")).SendKeys("Test City"); driver.FindElement(By.Id("state")).SendKeys("TX"); driver.FindElement(By.Id("btnSubmit")).Click(); Assert.IsTrue(driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("confirm-label")).Text. Contains("Submission successful.")); } } }
And there it is! If you run this test case, you’ll see the Firefox browser come up and go through actions specified in the test case above.
Saving our fingers and speeding up our tests!
If you happen to find the Selenium API a little verbose then you’re not alone. I feel the same way. Having to type ‘driver.FindElement(By.Name(“firstName”))’ for every single action starts getting tedious pretty quick – even with IntelliSense! The other issue that you’ll notice as soon as you have more than one test-case is that starting up the FirefoxDriver takes a bit of time. What we really want is a way to create the driver once and then simply re-use it across all our tests. Another pain point are logins. For most apps, a great majority of tests will require that a user be logged in. Furthermore, you’re likely re-use the same login across most of your test-cases. Instead of having each of our tests log the user in every single time, why not skip the login process if the user is already logged in? Both these changes will make a significant impact in speeding up our tests. So let’s add them!
Below is a base-level class that contains the improvements pointed out above and also provides some helper methods to give our fingers a break!
public class BaseIntegrationTest
{
public const string BaseUrl = "http://localhost:8888";
// specify if our web-app uses a virtual path
private const string VirtualPath = "";
private const int TimeOut = 30;
private static int _testClassesRunning;
private static readonly IWebDriver StaticDriver = CreateDriverInstance();
private static Login _currentlyLoggedInAs;
static BaseIntegrationTest()
{
StaticDriver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitlyWait(
TimeSpan.FromSeconds(TimeOut));
}
// Pass in null if want to run your test-case without logging in.
public static void ClassInitialize(Login login = null)
{
_testClassesRunning++;
if (login == null)
{
Logoff();
}
else if (!IsCurrentlyLoggedInAs(login))
{
Logon(login);
}
}
public static void ClassCleanup()
{
try
{
_testClassesRunning--;
if (_testClassesRunning == 0)
{
StaticDriver.Quit();
}
}
catch (Exception)
{
// Ignore errors if unable to close the browser
}
}
public IWebDriver Driver
{
get { return StaticDriver; }
}
public void Open(string url)
{
Driver.Navigate().GoToUrl(BaseUrl + VirtualPath + url.Trim('~'));
}
public void Click(string id)
{
Click(By.Id(id));
}
public void Click(By locator)
{
Driver.FindElement(locator).Click();
}
public void ClickAndWait(string id, string newUrl)
{
ClickAndWait(By.Id(id), newUrl);
}
/// <summary>
/// Use when you are navigating via a hyper-link and need for the page to fully load before
/// moving further.
/// </summary>
public void ClickAndWait(By locator, string newUrl)
{
Driver.FindElement(locator).Click();
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(Driver,
TimeSpan.FromSeconds(TimeOut));
wait.Until(d => d.Url.Contains(newUrl.Trim('~')));
}
public void AssertCurrentPage(string pageUrl)
{
var absoluteUrl = new Uri(new Uri(BaseUrl), VirtualPath +
pageUrl.Trim('~')).ToString();
Assert.AreEqual(absoluteUrl, Driver.Url);
}
public void AssertTextContains(string id, string text)
{
AssertTextContains(By.Id(id), text);
}
public void AssertTextContains(By locator, string text)
{
Assert.IsTrue(Driver.FindElement(locator).Text.Contains(text));
}
public void AssertTextEquals(string id, string text)
{
AssertTextEquals(By.Id(id), text);
}
public void AssertTextEquals(By locator, string text)
{
Assert.AreEqual(text, Driver.FindElement(locator).Text);
}
public void AssertValueContains(string id, string text)
{
AssertValueContains(By.Id(id), text);
}
public void AssertValueContains(By locator, string text)
{
Assert.IsTrue(GetValue(locator).Contains(text));
}
public void AssertValueEquals(string id, string text)
{
AssertValueEquals(By.Id(id), text);
}
public void AssertValueEquals(By locator, string text)
{
Assert.AreEqual(text, GetValue(locator));
}
public IWebElement GetElement(string id)
{
return Driver.FindElement(By.Id(id));
}
public string GetValue(By locator)
{
return Driver.FindElement(locator).GetAttribute("value");
}
public string GetText(By locator)
{
return Driver.FindElement(locator).Text;
}
public void Type(string id, string text)
{
var element = GetElement(id);
element.Clear();
element.SendKeys(text);
}
public void Uncheck(string id)
{
Uncheck(By.Id(id));
}
public void Uncheck(By locator)
{
var element = Driver.FindElement(locator);
if(element.Selected)
element.Click();
}
// Selects an element from a drop-down list.
public void Select(string id, string valueToBeSelected)
{
var options = GetElement(id).FindElements(By.TagName("option"));
foreach (var option in options)
{
if(valueToBeSelected == option.Text)
option.Click();
}
}
private static IWebDriver CreateDriverInstance(string baseUrl = BaseUrl)
{
return new FirefoxDriver();
}
private static bool IsCurrentlyLoggedInAs(Login login)
{
return _currentlyLoggedInAs != null &&
_currentlyLoggedInAs.Equals(login);
}
private static void Logon(Login login)
{
StaticDriver.Navigate().GoToUrl(BaseUrl + VirtualPath + "/Logon.aspx");
StaticDriver.FindElement(By.Id("userId")).SendKeys(login.Username);
StaticDriver.FindElement(By.Id("password")).SendKeys(login.Password);
StaticDriver.FindElement(By.Id("btnLogin")).Click();
_currentlyLoggedInAs = login;
}
private static void Logoff()
{
StaticDriver.Navigate().GoToUrl(
VirtualPath + RedirectLinks.SignOff.Trim('~'));
_currentlyLoggedInAs = null;
}
}
public class Login
{
public Login(string username, string password)
{
Username = username;
Password = password;
}
public string Username { get; private set; }
public string Password { get; private set; }
public override bool Equals(object obj)
{
Login compareTo = obj as Login;
if (compareTo == null)
return false;
return compareTo.Username == Username &&
compareTo.Password == Password;
}
}
public class Logins
{
public static Login UserOne
{
get
{
return new Login("user_1", "foobar1");
}
}
public static Login UserTwo
{
get
{
return new Login("user_2", "foobar2");
}
}
}Upon inheriting from BaseIntegrationTest class, our test-case will look like the following:
using System; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting; using OpenQA.Selenium; using OpenQA.Selenium.Firefox; namespace Web.UI.Tests { [TestClass] public class FillFormIntegrationTest : BaseIntegrationTest { [ClassInitialize] public static void ClassInitialize(TestContext context) { ClassInitialize(Logins.UserOne); } [ClassCleanup] public static void ClassCleanup() { BaseIntegrationTest.ClassCleanup(); } [TestMethod] public void CanFillAndSubmitFormAfterLogin() { Open("~/FillOutForm.aspx"); Assert.AreEqual("Fill out form", driver.Title); Type("firstName", "User"); Type("lastName", "One"); Type("address1", "99 Test Street"); Type("city", "Test City"); Type("state", "TX"); Click("btnSubmit"); AssertTextContains(By.CssSelector("confirm-label"), "Submission successful."); } } }
Much better, don’t you think? 
In my next and final post on Selenium, I’ll go over the use of cookies to simulate and test various scenarios when integrating with 3rd party software.
Cheers!
Writing integration tests for ASP .NET with Selenium 2.0 – Part 1
This is the first in a series of posts on writing integration tests for ASP .NET using the Selenium 2.0 web application testing system.
UPDATE: This post was updated on April 15, 2012 to explain how to setup and configure Selenium 2.0.
In this post, I explain what Selenium is, why use it and how to setup and configure it. In the next subsequent posts, I’ll do a code walk-thru and also share some advanced scenarios.
What is Selenium?
The best description of Selenium is probably the one mentioned on their website:
“Selenium automates browsers. That’s it. What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Boring web-based administration tasks can (and should!) also be automated as well.”
Why use Selenium?
There are other integration testing web frameworks out there such as WaitN or the Lightweight Test Automation Framework for testing ASP .NET web apps. So, why use Selenium? Here are the main reasons why picked it:
- Selenium allows you to record test scenarios manually (by browsing to specific pages and clicking buttons, etc.) as well as programmatically (by coding up a test case). Thus the tool can be used by both developers and QA’s. You can even use a combination of recorded test scenarios and C# test cases to integration test your application.
- One feature that I really liked is that you can export a recorded test scenario as a C# test-case! This technique can be used to drastically speed up the Selenium learning curve since it spits out code that you can use inside C# test-case. For instance, when you’re unsure how to code up a specific scenario you can manually record it and then export it to see what the code needs to look like.
- The recorded scripts can be used as a tool to speed up manual testing. For example, I never manually login into the web application that I am currently implementing anymore. Instead I run a test scenario that I had previously recorded, conveniently named Login, that logs me in. No more manually typing in username/password! You can use this technique to directly land on specific pages and/or fill-in and submit forms as well. This adds up to save you boat loads of time during your manual testing.
- Finally, the test recorder is a small Firefox plugin and integrates real nice with Firefox.
Convinced? Awesome! Let’s move on to setting up Selenium…
Initial Setup
There are two parts to setting up Selenium:
- Installing the Selenium IDE: A Firefox plugin that allows you to manually record test scenarios. Find and download the Selenium IDE plugin from the Selenium Downloads section. After it downloads, fire up the Firefox browser -> Go to Add Ons from the Main Menu -> Click the Settings icon -> Select the Install Add-On From File option -> Click Install Add-On.
- Installing the Selenium 2.0 WebDriver for .NET: Accepts commands from your C# test cases and automates the browser. Using the NuGet Package Manager Console, run the below commands to install the Selenium packages. Make sure you select your test project as the “Default project” inside the Package Manager Console before running the commands. This way the DLLs will get added to the correct project.
Install-Package Selenium.WebDriver Install-Package Selenium.Support
Okay, at this point, we should be all set with Selenium. Verify the following:
- You are able to record a test scenario: Fire up Firefox. On the Main Menu, under Web Developer, you should now see a Selenium IDE option. Or you can use the Ctrl+Alt+S shortcut key to bring it up. Click the record button on the top right, browse to goggle.com, and search for something. Click the record button again to stop the recording. Now try running the script by clicking the play button and see what happens. Make sure you are already on the google.com page when you click the Play button. Hopefully, it worked. If not, call me. I’ll help you out and I only charge a $150/hr. Just kidding. If it doesn’t work then try re-installing the plugin, I guess.
- You are able to write and run C# integration test-cases using Selenium – This is what I go over in my next post on Selenium.