UI Testing with PyTest and Selenium¶

Automated testing allows you execution of script, that doesn’t require human interactions. This document helps you create and execute automated testing.

This document assumes that we’re testing Web Application, anything that runs in Browser can be automatically tested.

Approach to Automated Testing¶

Perform actions: Click, Keying in Data etc.
Perform assertions: assert
Move to next test

Pre-requisite¶

Make a list of test cases
Write a description of every test case
Write down the expected and actual results of the test case
Test manually first, to ensure consistency

Recording Tests¶

Selenium is a tool that allows us test automatically via Browser. We will be using specifically Katalon, this allows us to record and export code.

Installing Katalon Recorder¶

Open Chrome/Firefox browser
Click on the kebab menu on the top right side of the URL bar
Click on more tools/Add-ons , select extensions option
After getting redirected to the extension page search for katalon/selenium recorder.
Then click on add extension, it will get added to the browser

Recording Actions¶

Open recorder from the extension list
After opening the recorder, click on new+ button on the navbar
Click on + sign on the sidebar of the recorder after a window pop-ups.Provide the test suite name and click on ok/submit button
After clicking on the New button we can provide the name of the test case. Things to remember while naming test: Make it relevant. Click on the OK button, once done
Now click on the Record button present on the navbar, this will redirect to the chrome browser
Now start testing/recording the test case, perform all actions as you’d normally do
Now switch back to the recorder app or page and click on the STOP button
Click on the PLAY button beside the record button, and click on the timer icon on the top right side of the page, by using the timer option the user can control the speed of the running test case

Exporting Test cases¶

Click on the Export button on the navbar
An export window will pop up
Select the desired scripting format python/pytest
Click on Save as a file or copy to clipboard paste it on some other location

PyTest integration¶

According to Official Website

The pytest framework makes it easy to write small tests, yet scales to support complex functional testing for applications and libraries.

By convention pytest will look for anything with test_ extension as prefix, including all the sub-directories.

Installation¶

Run pip install pytest on terminal
Check that you installed the correct version(pytest –version)

pytest allows you to configure different aspects using conftest.py. Typically setup and teardown functions are supported using fixtures.

According to official documentation

pytest fixtures offer dramatic improvements over the classic xUnit style of setup/teardown functions:

fixtures have explicit names and are activated by declaring their use from test functions, modules, classes or whole projects.

fixtures are implemented in a modular manner, as each fixture name triggers a fixture function which can itself use other fixtures.

fixture management scales from simple unit to complex functional testing, allowing to parametrize fixtures and tests according to configuration and component options, or to re-use fixtures across function, class, module or whole test session scopes.

Following is sample setup of fixture in conftest.py

@pytest.fixture(scope='session')
def setup(request):
    chromedriver = "/usr/local/bin/chromedriver"
    print("\Initiating chrome driver")
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(chromedriver, chrome_options=options)
    session = request.node
    for item in session.items:
        cls = item.getparent(pytest.Class)
        setattr(cls.obj, "driver", driver)
    driver.implicitly_wait(30)
    yield driver
    time.sleep(2)
    driver.close()

Here, as users can see we have used a mark fixture for a set up function which contains the browser/driver path, chromedriver, chrome_options=options are options that you can use to customize and configure a ChromeDriver session.

Locators¶

Locators allow us to search for element on which to perform operations on. Remember HTML is a tree, finding right element to operate on is important. Some actions that can be performed include:

Click on Element {E.g. Button, Links etc}
Input on Element {E.g. Updating Username and Password}

To locate element on Web Page there are few methods:

Using ID: driver.find_element_by_id(“email”).click()
Using Class Name: driver.find_element_by_class_name(“Container”).click()
Using Name Attribute: driver.find_element_by_name(“password”).send_keys(“test”)
Using XPATH: driver.find_element_by_xpath(//button[text()=’Ok’]).click()
Using Link Text: driver.find_element_by_link_text(“Sign Out”).click()
Using CSS Selector: driver.find_element_by_css_selector(‘p.content’)

Interacting with Page¶

Selenium’s Docs on Navigating shows few examples

Sending Keys: element.send_keys(“some text”) or element.send_keys(” and some”, Keys.ARROW_DOWN)
Clearing Element: element.clear()
Clicking: driver.find_element_by_id(“submit”).click()

Tips for Debugging¶

Run every test case at least twice
Also run entire test suite and check behaviour of Web Application
Solve runtime error as soon as possible
Make sure your assert statements are corrects
Code Review your tests
Use DRY method in the tests