Selenium RC

SELENIUM 1 (SELENIUM RC)

(http://seleniumhq.org/docs/05_selenium_rc.html)

Introduction

As you can read in Brief History of The Selenium Project, Selenium RC was the main Selenium project for a long time, before the WebDriver/Selenium merge brought up Selenium 2, the newest and more powerful tool.

Selenium 1 is still actively supported (mostly in maintenance mode) and provides some features that may not be available in Selenium 2 for a while, including support for several languages (Java, Javascript, PRuby, HP, Python, Perl and C#) and support for almost every browser out there.

How Selenium RC Works

First, we will describe how the components of Selenium RC operate and the role each plays in running your test scripts.

RC Components

Selenium RC components are:

• The Selenium Server which launches and kills browsers, interprets and runs the Selenese commands passed from the test program, and acts as an HTTP proxy, intercepting and verifying HTTP messages passed between the browser and the AUT.

• Client libraries which provide the interface between each programming language and the Selenium RC Server.

Here is a simplified architecture diagram....

for execution. Then the server passes the Selenium command to the browser using Selenium-Core JavaScript commands. The browser, using its JavaScript interpreter, executes the Selenium command. This runs the Selenese action or verification you specified in your test script.

Selenium Server

Selenium Server receives Selenium commands from your test program, interprets them, and reports back to your program the results of running those tests. The RC server bundles Selenium Core and automatically injects it into the browser. This occurs when

your 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 your 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 your 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 your 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 your program. Your 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.

Installation

After downloading the Selenium RC zip file from the downloads page, you’ll notice it has several subfolders. These folders have all the components you need for using Selenium RC with the programming language of your choice. Once you’ve chosen a language to work with, you simply need to:

• Install the Selenium RC Server.

• Set up a programming project using a language specific client driver.

 Installing Selenium Server

The Selenium RC server is simply a Java jar file (selenium-server.jar), which doesn’t require any special installation. Just downloading the zip file and extracting the server in the desired directory is sufficient.

Running Selenium Server

Before starting any tests you must start the server. Go to the directory where Selenium RC’s server is located and run the following from a command-line console.

java -jar selenium-server.jar

This can be simplified by creating a batch or shell executable file (.bat on Windows and .sh on Linux) containing the command above. Then make a shortcut to that executable on your desktop and simply double-click the icon to start the server. For the server to run you’ll need Java installed and the PATH environment variable correctly configured

to run it from the console. You can check that you have Java correctly installed by running the following on a console:

java -version

If you get a version number (which needs to be 1.5 or later), you’re ready to start using Selenium RC.

Using the .NET Client Driver

• Download Selenium RC from the SeleniumHQ downloads page

• Extract the folder

• Download and install NUnit ( Note: You can use NUnit as your test engine. If you’re not familiar yet with NUnit, you can also write a simple main() function to run your tests; however NUnit is very useful as a test engine.)

• Open your desired .Net IDE (Visual Studio, SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop)

• Create a class library (.dll)

• Add references to the following DLLs: nmock.dll, nunit.core.dll, nunit. framework.dll,

ThoughtWorks.Selenium.Core.dll, ThoughtWorks.Selenium.IntegrationTests.dll and Thought-Works.Selenium.UnitTests.dll

• Write your Selenium test in a .Net language (C#, VB.Net), or export a script from Selenium-IDE to a C# file and copy this code into the class file you just created.

• Write your own simple main() program or you can include NUnit in your project for running your test. These concepts are explained later in this chapter.

• Run Selenium server from console

• Run your test either from the IDE, from the NUnit GUI or from the command line

For specific details on .NET client driver configuration with Visual Studio, see the appendix .NET client driver configuration.

Selenese as Programming Code

Here is the test script exported (via Selenium-IDE) to each of the supported programming languages. If you have at least basic knowledge of an object- oriented programming language, you will understand how Selenium runs Selenese commands by reading one of these examples. To see an example in a specific language, select one of these buttons.

In C#:

using System;

using System.Text;

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

using System.Threading;

using NUnit.Framework;

using Selenium;

namespace SeleniumTests

{

[TestFixture]

public class NewTest

{

private ISelenium selenium;

private StringBuilder verificationErrors;

[SetUp]

public void SetupTest()

{

selenium = new DefaultSelenium( "localhost" , 4444, "*firefox" , "http://www.selenium.Start();

verificationErrors = new StringBuilder();

}

[TearDown]

public void TeardownTest()

{

try

{

selenium.Stop();

}

catch (Exception)

{

// Ignore errors if unable to close the browser

}

Assert.AreEqual( "" , verificationErrors.ToString());

}

[Test]

public void TheNewTest()

{

selenium.Open( "/" );

selenium.Type( "q" , "selenium rc" );

selenium.Click( "btnG" );

selenium.WaitForPageToLoad( "30000" );

Assert.AreEqual( "selenium rc - Google Search" , selenium.GetTitle());

}

}

}

Programming Your Test

Now we’ll illustrate how to program your own tests using examples in programming language. There are essentially two tasks:

• Generate your script into a programming language from Selenium-IDE, optionally modifying the result.

• Write a very simple main program that executes the generated code. Optionally, you can adopt a test engine platform NUnit for .NET.

C#

The .NET Client Driver works with Microsoft.NET. It can be used with any .NET testing framework

like NUnit or the Visual Studio 2005 Team System.

Selenium-IDE assumes you will use NUnit as your testing framework. You can see this in the generated

code below. It includes the using statement for NUnit along with corresponding NUnit attributes

identifying the role for each member function of the test class.

You will probably have to rename the test class from “NewTest” to something of your own choosing.

Also, you will need to change the browser-open parameters in the statement:

selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*iehta", "http://www.google.com/");

The generated code will look similar to this.

using System;

using System.Text;

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

using System.Threading;

using NUnit.Framework;

using Selenium;

namespace SeleniumTests

{

[TestFixture]

public class NewTest

{

private ISelenium selenium;

private StringBuilder verificationErrors;

[SetUp]

public void SetupTest()

{

selenium = new DefaultSelenium( "localhost" , 4444, "*iehta" ,

"http://www.google.com/" );

selenium.Start();

verificationErrors = new StringBuilder();

}

[TearDown]

public void TeardownTest()

{

try

{

selenium.Stop();

}

catch (Exception)

{

// Ignore errors if unable to close the browser

}

Assert.AreEqual( "" , verificationErrors.ToString());

}

[Test]

public void TheNewTest()

{

// Open Google search engine.

selenium.Open( "http://www.google.com/" );

// Assert Title of page.

Assert.AreEqual( "Google" , selenium.GetTitle());

// Provide search term as "Selenium OpenQA"

selenium.Type( "q" , "Selenium OpenQA" );

// Read the keyed search term and assert it.

Assert.AreEqual( "Selenium OpenQA" , selenium.GetValue( "q" ));

// Click on Search button.

selenium.Click( "btnG" );

// Wait for page to load.

selenium.WaitForPageToLoad( "5000" );

// Assert that "www.openqa.org" is available in search results.

Assert.IsTrue(selenium.IsTextPresent( "www.openqa.org" ));

// Assert that page title is - "Selenium OpenQA - Google Search"

Assert.AreEqual( "Selenium OpenQA - Google Search" ,

selenium.GetTitle());

}

}

}

You can allow NUnit to manage the execution of your tests. Or alternatively, you can write a simple main() program that instantiates the test object and runs each of the three methods, SetupTest(), The- NewTest(), and TeardownTest() in turn.

Learning the API

The Selenium RC API uses naming conventions that, assuming you understand Selenese, much of the interface will be self-explanatory. Here, however, we explain the most critical and possibly less obvious aspects.

Starting the Browser

In C#:

selenium = new DefaultSelenium( "localhost" , 4444, "*firefox" , "http://www.google.com/" selenium.Start();

This example opens the browser and represents that browser by assigning a “browser instance” to a program variable. This program variable is then used to call methods from the browser. These methods execute the Selenium commands, i.e. like open or type or the verify commands. The parameters required when creating the browser instance are:

host Specifies the IP address of the computer where the server is located. Usually, this is the same machine as where the client is running, so in this case localhost is passed. In some clients this is an optional parameter.

port Specifies the TCP/IP socket where the server is listening waiting for the client to establish a connection. This also is optional in some client drivers.

browser The browser in which you want to run the tests. This is a required parameter.

url The base url of the application under test. This is required by all the client libs and is integral information for starting up the browser-proxy-AUT communication.

Note that some of the client libraries require the browser to be started explicitly by calling its start() method.