Quick Tutorial On Selenium For Impatient Learners

What is a selenium ?

1. Selenium is a open-source testing tool, which can interact with the web content inside the real browser such as firefox, google chrome, internet explorer.
2. Selenium is used for automating web application & in Regression testing. Regression testing means, testing the application after the code fixes, & enhancements, to make sure that existing features were not broken. This saves a lot of time and manual rework.
3. Writing Selenium scripts requires some prior knowledge on java programming. 

Let's come to the point, 

How selenium interacts with the content inside a browser ?

   The answer lies in Webdriver. So what is Webdriver ? Webdriver is a tool in selenium, which can open the real browser and can communicate with it. In java terms, Webdriver is an interface. 

How to instantiate Webdriver ?

You can instantiate Webdriver with FirefoxDriver, ChromeDriver, InternetExplorerDriver. The below examples shows how to do. 

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

WebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();

Once, after creation of WebDriver object, the Selenium opens appropriate web browser. 

How to Open a already developed web application or any URL?

Use get() method of WebDriver to load the Web application or any web page. 

driver.get("https://www.gmail.com");

Note: Always mention the protocol (http/ https). otherwise selenium throws an Exception. 

How to find an Element existing in the page using Selenium ?

Use WebElement. Any element in the page, such as , Button, Text Field, Link, or any tag will be considered as WebElement , you can find the WebElement, using number of ways, 

Finding Element using it's Id :

for example, if you have a tag with id, like <a id = "anchor"> www.speakingcs.com</a> , the code to get this element is.

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.id("anchor"));

Finding Element using it's name : 

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.name("$name of element"));

Finding Element using it's Xpath :

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.xpath("$xpath of element"); Here is the sample tutorial from youtube to find xpath.

Finding Element using it's Class name :

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.className("$class of element"));

you can also find element using its css selector,

Finding Element using it's Css selector :

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("$css selector of element"));

Finding Element using it's Tag name :

In the webpage , if you have an element like this "<table> <tr> <td> selenium</td></tr></table>" and if it is not associated with name, id, class name, css selector, then you can find the element using it's tag name or xpath.

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.tagName("table"));

Finding Multiple Elements with same name, id , or class name :

 If the webpage has more elements with same name, use the method findElements() instead of findElement(). The findElements() method returns a list of all the elements with same name or id or tagname.

List<WebElement> tablesList = driver.findElements(By.tagName("table"));

How to fill the Form using Selenium ?

Use the sendKeys() method to fill a text field , or text area. In order to do that, you need to find the element first using above mentioned guidelines. Here is the sample code to fill the text field.

WebElement textFieldWe = driver.findElement(By.name("First Name"));
textFieldWe.sendKeys("speaking cs");

                                        or

you can combine both two lines like this,
driver.findElement(By.name("FirstName")).sendKeys("speaking cs"));

How to click an Element such as Link, Button Using Selenium ?

Use the click() method of WebElement. Follow the same rules for finding WebElement in the page.

WebElement buttonWe  = driver.findElement(By.name("Publish"));
buttonWe.click();

                                                   or
combine the above lines like below
driver.findElement(By.name("Publish")).click();

How to submit the Form using Selenium ?

clicking the submit button in the forms won't push your form's data to server. You need to use submit() method of WebElement.

WebElement submitButtonWe = driver.findElement(By.name("submit"));
submitButtonWe.submit();

                                        or

driver.findElement(By.name("submit")).submit();

How to retrieve Attribute from the Element ?

if an Element is associated with Attributes and if you want to get that attribute use getAttribute() method of WebElement.

Eg: <a href = "www.speakingcs.com">speakingcs</a>

first find the anchor tag

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.tagName("a"));
System.out.println("url is " + anchorWe.getAttribute("href"));

Retrieving the text associated with the WebElement : 

use getText() method to retrieve text of an element. The code snippet is below.

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.tagName("a"));
anchorWe.getText(); // gives result as "speakingcs".

How to find InnerHtml and OuterHtml of an Element ?

use getAttribute() method and pass "innerHTML" as argument to get InnterHtml of the element and pass "outerHTML" as argument to get outerHtml. Here is the code.

WebElement anchorWe = driver.findElement(By.tagName("a"));
anchorWe.getAttribute("innerHTML"); // result is <a href = "www.speakingcs.com">speakingcs</a>
anchorWe.getAttribute("outerHTML"); // result will be html code of it's parent tag.