In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, delivering high-quality web applications is more critical than ever. Automated testing has emerged as a game-changer, and Selenium WebDriver has become the de facto choice for web application automation. In this guide, we will explore how to harness the power of Selenium WebDriver with Python to automate your web application testing.
Let’s dive into how they work together and their applications.
How Selenium WebDriver and Python Work Together?
With automation testing using Selenium Python, you can automate repetitive tasks that involve interacting with websites, such as:
- Web Testing: Use Selenium and Python to automate testing of web applications across different browsers and environments.
- Web Scraping: Combine them to extract data from dynamic websites with JavaScript-based content rendering.
- Task Automation: Automate repetitive tasks like form submissions, logging in, and navigating through websites.
How To Configure Python and Selenium to Automate Web Application Testing?
Configuring Python and Selenium for web application testing involves several steps. Selenium is a popular automation tool for testing web applications. It allows you to automate browser interactions and perform various testing tasks.
1. Install Python: If you haven’t already, download and install Python from the official Python website (https://www.python.org/). Make sure to add Python to your system’s PATH during installation.
2. Set Up a Virtual Environment (Optional): It’s recommended to create a virtual environment for your Selenium project to isolate dependencies. Open a terminal and navigate to your project directory:
cd your_project_directory
python -m venv venv
Activate the virtual environment:
- On Windows:
Venv\Scripts\activate
- On macOS and Linux:
source venv/bin/activate
3. Install Selenium: With your virtual environment activated, install Selenium using pip:
pip install selenium
4. Download Webdriver: Selenium interacts with browsers through webdrivers. You need to download the appropriate webdriver for the browser you intend to automate. The most common ones are ChromeDriver for Google Chrome and GeckoDriver for Mozilla Firefox.
Download the webdriver and place it in a directory that is included in your system’s PATH.
- ChromeDriver: https://googlechromelabs.github.io/chrome-for-testing/
- GeckoDriver: https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases
You can now begin writing your first Python Selenium test.
How to Automate First Selenium Python Test
Automating your first Selenium test using Python involves several steps. Selenium is a popular framework used for automating web browser interactions, and it’s commonly used for testing web applications.
Write Your First Test:
Create a Python script (e.g., first_test.py) and open it with your favorite text editor or integrated development environment (IDE). In this example, we’ll use ChromeDriver and Google Chrome.
#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from selenium import webdriver
# Wait for a specific condition (e.g., page title)
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
# Initialize the Chrome webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
# Open a website
driver.get(‘https://www.example.com’)
# Perform actions
element = driver.find_element_by_xpath(“//input[@name=’q’]”)
element.send_keys(‘Selenium automation’)
element.submit()
wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)
wait.until(EC.title_contains(‘Selenium automation’))
# Perform assertions or further actions
assert ‘Selenium automation’ in driver.title
# Close the browser
driver.quit()
Run the Test using cmd
Open a terminal/command prompt and navigate to the directory containing your first_test.py script. Run the script using the command python first_test.py.
Report using pytest-html
To generate comprehensive test reports using the pytest testing framework, combined with the pytest-html plugin, employ the following command: pytest -s -v –html=Reports\report.html testCases/test_login.py. This command will execute the specified test file (test_login.py in the testCases directory), capturing test results and formatting them into an HTML report named report.html stored within the Reports directory. The -s flag preserves standard output, -v increases verbosity, and –html specifies the report generation format.
Conclusion
By combining Selenium WebDriver and Python, you’ve embarked on a journey of efficient web application testing automation.
If you’re eager to explore the potential of Selenium automation testing with Python, our team at Testrig, a leading Selenium automation testing company, can collaborate with your team to help you achieve maximum productivity and returns from your automated Selenium tests.
