No Automated Testing

Test Case Template

2013-06-16T07:54:00.003+05:30

I have uploaded a new video on Test Case template. The video can be accessed here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYMl8f3vjKU Video description has template download URL.
I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Do provide feedback and thumbs up if you enjoy video.

Lollipop of US Visa

2013-06-07T12:32:00.000+05:30

There is great charm about on-site (read USA) work in employees of Indian IT service industry. This is also seen as great tactic by your employer to keep you engaged with company and not hop job. You are often offered an on-site trip if you are the project savior and decide to quit. And few of you indeed get to go to client place with great pride. But do you get to go on work visa? By and large answer is NO. And probably you don't even know that you are sent to work on illegal visa, famously known as B1 visa. There is nothing illegal about B1 visa per se but this category of visa allows only business meeting or attending seminars. This is why there is initial cap of 3 months to stay. Once it is stamped by your employer that you would travel on-site, this how whole story goes -

You are scheduled for an interview with US consulate. Your HR comes to train you on how you should speak about supposed business trip and not utter a word about work

You are ecstatic once your visa is approved. More happy as you are entitled to 40$ per day along with your Indian salary

You land up in USA and stay for three months and some times work requires you to extend your stay for another 3 months. You complete the job and come back to India. Back in India, you are asked to share you views with rest of team and team assumes that you are the only one who shoulders bigger responsibility and they owe it to you. You see your self as a hero

Now read this -

You HR is lying to you and keeping you in dark. You are going to work on B1 visa, at best it can only be called illegal. What you need is L1 or H1 visa.

You don't realize how much a legal worker paid for the same job you are going to do. But any way it's on-site visit, you are the chosen one in team and pride matters along with extra pennies your trip is going to fetch you

Working for first 3 months on B1 visa is itself illegal but if that was not enough you are required to work for 3 more months. And if it were not for the limit of 6 months your employer would ask you to stay for even longer and pay you pennies

You don't have do any research to find truth about these facts. Look how many of your team members have been to US on B1 visa and worked. Where does the problem arise from? Why are we Indians so fascinated with on-site trips? The reason is simple, being triton among minnows gives great sense of self accomplishment. We want to show how superior we are to the team and to the society. After all working in US is considered a royal status in India. Is not it? And don't forget those extra dimes your illegals trip is going to fetch you. You are already paid cents and extra pennies boost your morale immensely.

Now how many of us would accept it if a worker from Pakistan or Sri Lanka comes to India on illegal visa, works and earns money, causes an Indian to lose the job because foreign worker is ready to do the job cheaper than us and eventually goes back to his/her country. Makes you angry? This is exactly what we have doing to native Americans. We go to work on illegal visa, are paid less and deprive American citizens of job.

But it also seems that US companies/authorities are in cahoots with Indian IT companies. They can hunt down Osama in a foreign land but have been unable to detect B1 visa fraud for so long. Though it seems that few cases are finally emerging. Have you heard of Infosys visa fraud issue?

I can never have any thing against working in USA. In fact there are great tech companies and innovations happen in USA than any where else in word. But Indian IT companies have only exploited the huge work force we have here in India. Exploited to the extent that fresh graduates are hired from college but portrayed as experienced engineers. The engineers are paid least and manager enjoy most (I have seen as big team of two engineers with one manager). Sent to work on illegal visa. Can be laid off any time but if you want to leave then you need to comply with notice period. Need to wear formal every single day. Does not matter if you stay in office till 12 am but should be back in office 9am next day. Heavy on processes, 90% of which is sheer overhead. I can keep writing on the nonsense which goes in to Indian IT service industry. But the bigger question is - do we want to shape up such IT industry in India?

Insecured Captcha

2013-06-05T23:35:00.000+05:30

Courtesy - GOI

Selenium Training video for 12th December Session

2012-12-16T00:17:00.000+05:30

7h Selenium Training session was conducted on 12th December. There were more than 100 registration and about 40 selenium enthusiasts participated in live training. Following topics were covered in training -

Soft assertion in Selenium Test (continuing test execution of method even if one assert fails)

Data driven testing using csv files and analyzing test data in TestNG Report

Using Selenium Grid to scale your selenium tests

Training video is available on YouTube.

Selenium Project is available for download as well.
Please post session related questions in forum

Selenium Training Meet on 12th Dec

2012-12-08T10:55:00.000+05:30

Guys, I have set up next Selenium Training Meet on 12th December.

Following topics would be covered in Selenium Training Meet -

Soft assertion in Test (continuing test execution of method even if one assert fails)
Using csv file for test data
Using Selenium Grid to scale selenium tests

I have deferred android automation for next meet.

Registration Form is open for sign ups

Selenium Training Video for Dec 2nd Session

2012-12-06T01:24:00.000+05:30

We conducted 6th Selenium Training meet on December 2nd. There were about 400 registration and about 45 selenium enthusiasts participated in live training. Following topics were covered in training -

Page Factory Pattern

Data externalization using properties files

Capture application screen shot only during test failure (TestNG + Selenium)

Introduction to Maven and mavenizing your Selenium project

Training video can be accessed from Selenium Training page.

Selenium Maven Project used during training is also available for download.

A big thanks to anymeeting.com for providing great resources in conducting this meet.

Capture network traffic using WebDriver

2012-10-30T13:07:00.001+05:30

We often come across testing requirements when we need to analyze the network traffic to find -

HTTP status of page
Analyze header information to find if right information is passed
Validating parameters related to ajax requests etc

Selenium 1 has had a way to capture n/w traffic but the feature does not always work as expected. At times Selenium 1 does not capture all n/w traffic, And given that Selenium 1 APIs are almost dead it is
worth using solutions available for Selenium 2 (WebDriver). I have come across two solution of capturing n/w traffic with WebDriver -

Browser Mob Proxy (BMP) - which acts as proxy server b/w WebDriver and your application, captures all the transactions b/w browser and application and creates a HAR file. Sounds interesting? But I came across a few issues using BMP -

Test execution goes sluggish because of using proxy server
Test steps go abrupt at times, for example you may have to click same button twice/thrice to perform operation
BMP does not support capturing n/w traffic against application running on localhost (at least not at the time of writing this post.)

If you get to work with BMP then bigger advantage is its capability of capturing network traffic across all browsers. But if your test require you to use only Firefox then there is more elegant solution available, that is to use

Firefox + Firebug + NetExport plugin

Firebug is as popular tool among selenium users as it is among developers. NetExport is add on to firebug which captures network traffic in form of HAR files. HAR file is json based file, refer HAR specification for more. NetExport can export all the n/w traffic in HAR format as detailed in image here

Manual operations of exporting HAR file can be automated using WebDriver.
WebDriver can easily configure firefox plug-in and step through the application to get the required HAR file generated. Refer this excellent example of configuring Firefox driver with firebug and netexport add ons. Once you get the HAR file then HarLib can be used to fetch the required data from HAR file.

Upcoming Selenium Training Meet on Dec 2nd 2012

2012-09-11T14:18:00.002+05:30

Hello All,
Next Selenium training meet for Dec 2nd 2012. The agenda of meeting would be -

Data externalization using csv files
Capture application screen shot only during test failure (TestNG + Selenium)
Introduction to Maven and mavenizing your Selenium project

Registration form is open. Since there is more than one month time I hope it gives suffice time to see past video meeting for newbies.

Selenium Training Meet Video for 9th September

2012-09-09T22:38:00.000+05:30

5th session of Selenium Training was conducted today. There were about 100 registrations and 38 participants in session. Topics covered in training -

Page Object Revisited
Optimizing Page Object methods
Using TestNG data provider method to do data driven testing
Executing java script from WebDriver

Meeting recording of Selenium Training Video is available for online viewing and Selenium project can be downloaded for practice.

Selenium Training Meet Video for 22nd July

2012-07-23T10:56:00.003+05:30

We conducted fourth Selenium training meet on 22nd July. There were 176 registrations and 50 participants were available for meeting. Agenda of meeting was to cover following topics -

Java Collection framework - List and Set
Map class
Page object pattern for writing Selenium tests

Selenium Training Video recording is available for on line viewing.
As again big thanks to anymeeting for providing us resources to conduct this meeting.

Security Testing - Session III - 29th July

2012-07-16T00:12:00.002+05:30

Hello all,
In the next session, we shall discuss in detail about Cross Site Scripting threat. Meeting agenda would be :

1. Cross Site Scripting - History & Introduction
2. Implications
3. Different types of Cross Site Scripting

Please do attend the session.

Meeting Registration Link

Thanks!

Security Testing - Session II - 15th July, 2012

2012-07-15T23:48:00.002+05:30

Hello Everyone,
In the second session on 'Security Testing', we covered the following concepts:

1. TamperData - Hidden form fields explointation, Javascript validation overrun, Privilege escalation
2. WebSpidering.

You can find the video recording of the session here.

These threats are kind of preliminary and require less technical expertise to understand. In the upcoming sessions, we will concentrate on more complex technical threats. So, please do stay tuned for next session.

Thanks!

Selenium Training Meet - 1st July 2012

2012-07-01T22:45:00.001+05:30

We conducted 3rd Selenium training meet today. There were 128 registrations and 44 participants.
We digressed from the agenda in this meeting and discussed on Java and how it is used in writing Selenium tests. Following topics were covered during meeting -

OOPS - Encapsulation, Abstraction, Inheritance, Polymorphism.

Introduction to Class, instance variable, instance methods, class variable, class method, Object

Constructor, Abstract Class, Interface, method overloading, method overriding, Package

Loops. To execute same statements time and again, for example logging in for 5 different accounts using same method.

Arrays. You don't want to keep writing variables all overs you test scripts. Wish you could create a large place holder for similar types of variables.

The java Collection framework could not be discussed today and would be taken up in next Selenium training meet. Here is the Meeting recording.

Security Testing Sessions Meet - 17th June - Video Recordings

2012-06-17T23:32:00.001+05:30

Hello Everyone,

In the first session on 'Security Testing', we had a discussion about following topics:

1. Web Security Testing
2. HTTP Protocol
3. Session ID & Cookies
4. OWASP
5. Live HTTP Header (Firefox Addon)

We covered the basics of Web technology and discussed about how the web technology works as such. In the subsequent session, we shall concentrate on specific threats.

Some of the attendees requested me to provide the url details of OWASP Top 10 document and other tools. I have provided them below for your reference:

1. OWASP Top 10 document
2. OWASP WebScarab
3. OWASP ZAP Proxy
4. OWASP Testing Guide

You can find the video link of the session here.

Please let me know if you require any further details.

Thanks,
V.Vasanth

Security Testing Session on 17th June

2012-06-08T00:38:00.000+05:30

Hello everyone,

This is Vasanth, one of the participants of Selenium Meet. Since the idea behind these meets is to share knowledge, I have scheduled next session on Security Testing.

As most of you are aware of, Security testing has become one of the hot and emerging field in IT industry . Organizations give lot of emphasis to data security and take several measures to prevent various kinds of data breach. There are several tools available in the market that help us in identifying the security vulnerabilities. But these tools would provide us just with the result and will not be of much helpful in understanding the concept of underlying threats. Also, it is believed that the automated tools help us in identifying only the low hanging threats and only a seasoned professional could identify the threats that are hidden in the system.

So, in the upcoming sessions, I would like to explain the concept behind the leading threats and would point you the various resources that we can use to uncover the threats.

I have set up first session on 17th June, 2012 between 9.00PM and 10.00 PM IST. Please refer agenda of the session. I would request you all to participate in this session. Please accept Meeting Request.

Thanks,

V.Vasanth

Selenium Training Meet 3rd June - Video Recording

2012-06-04T00:59:00.001+05:30

Yesterday was the second session of Selenium Training meet. There were 109 registrations for meeting and 54 users participated in it. We discussed on -

nth locator in CSS
Selenium IDE
Firefox and Chrome Driver
Using TestNG with Selenium

You can access Selenium Training Video Recording here. I hope none of you encounters any issue with video recording this time. I have uploaded Selenium Java Project here, which we used during session.

Don't hesitate to ask me any question about session or if you face any other issue with Selenium.

Stay tuned for next session. As again a big thanks to AnyMetting for their wonderful resources.

Selenium Training Meet 19th May - Video Recording

2012-05-20T00:42:00.000+05:30

Just finished first on line Selenium meeting. There were about 120 registration received and more than 60 users participated in meeting which does not seem bad for a meeting held on weekend. Meeting recordings can be watched here. Feel free to share in your contacts.

A few of you complained about audio unavailability. If you are not able to hear audio then please reload/refresh the video URL.

The meeting was largely focused on xPath and CSS locators. If you participated in meeting and have an opinion/suggestion then please post it here

A few of you asked me to post questions I asked towards end of session. They are -

How to use "ends-with" with xPath
How to use nested predicate with xPath
Finding nth child in css selector

We should also thank anymeeting for the wonderful resource they provided for on line meet. Stay tuned for next meet.

Headless tests with Firefox WebDriver

2012-04-26T16:39:00.001+05:30

There are times when you don't want a browser popping each time you execute the test. Or you just don't have privilege of having a browser display like in UNIX based system running your CI and not having any display. These are the times when you would find it right to execute your tests in headless browser mode.

What we need -

Xvfb: X virtual frame buffer is X11 server which does graphical operation in memory, hence no output is displayed. Wikipedia has more on it.
Firefox: World famous open source browser
A simple selenium test: As simple as launching Google in Firefox

First we need to install Xvfb and FF on Ubantu as -

sudo apt-get install Xvfb firefox

Not you can start Xvfb as -

Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1024x768x24 &

From manual of Xvfb -

-screen screennum WxHxD
           This option creates screen screennum and sets  its  width,  height,
           and  depth  to W, H, and D respectively.  By default, only screen 0
           exists and has the dimensions 1280x1024x8.

Now comes the selenium test. You need to guide Firefox so that it executes test in Xvfb started in previous steps.
This could be done by setting System level property for Xvfb as -

String Xport = System.getProperty("lmportal.xvfb.id", ":1");

and directing Firefox binary to use Xvfb as -

        FirefoxBinary firefoxBinary = new FirefoxBinary();
        firefoxBinary.setEnvironmentProperty("DISPLAY", Xport);
        WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxBinary, null);

If Firefox is not installed in standard location - /usr/bin/firefox then you can also specify path to Firefox binary as -

        final File firefoxPath = new File(System.getProperty(
                "lmportal.deploy.firefox.path", "/usr/bin/firefox"));
        FirefoxBinary firefoxBinary = new FirefoxBinary(firefoxPath);
        firefoxBinary.setEnvironmentProperty("DISPLAY", Xport);
        WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxBinary, null);

Whole test looks as -

On execution, FF will be launched in Xvfb and snap shot of google would be saved in your test directory. Since it is headless execution of test, you would not really see any browser popping on your screen.

To execute headless tests in Chrome, start chrome driver as -

ChromeDriverService chromeDriverService = new ChromeDriverService.Builder()
.usingChromeDriverExecutable(
new File(ChromeDriverLocation
.getchromeDriverLocation()))
.usingAnyFreePort().withEnvironment(
ImmutableMap.of("DISPLAY", ":1")).build();
chromeDriverService.start();
driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeDriverService);

Finally some good news for Software Testers

2012-04-05T16:50:00.001+05:30

Here are some of the latest Testing and IT news from our technical reporters -

IT managers consortium has agreed that software testers would no longer be blamed for a production defects. Though they are yet to find some one who they could put blame on (Johny the developer is said to be already suffering from ProductionDefectoPhobia)

Consortium has also agreed on having salary of software testers on par with software developer at least by 2020. There was an unanimous decision on increasing management salary by 23% from immediate effect

Consortium has barred developed from using phrase "It works locally". Violation of this rule would attract 1 night out in office. Continuous violation would attract exponential salary deductions

Speak and Automate - New era in automated testing. Voice Automation tool for web and windows application was released yesterday. This tool is capable of generating automation suites as you speak of application use cases. Tool supports recording tests in 17 human spoken languages. Support for recording tests in English would be available in next release on 1st April 2013. One of the hidden feature of tool is its ability of comprehending results for other's sake.

HP is supposedly sued Voice Automation tool company. HP claims that Voice Automation tools uses their patented technology which they were wanting to release in next version of QTP

HP is secretly trying buy Selenium, an open source testing tool. HP plans to merge Selenium with QTP, new tool would be called - "WeKilledOpenSource"

IT service industry in third world countries has decided to no more use non working VISA to depute their employees onsite, in return president Obama has taken auth to no more use words like - "Banaglore" and "Banaglored" when talking of outsourcing

And last but not least, 1st April has been declared world software testing day. All testers are allowed to vent their anger on this day

Is it sane to compare Selenium with QTP?

2012-02-08T16:13:00.001+05:30

I have seen many articles which compare Selenium (1 or 2) with QTP (or other commercial tools). But these articles miss very basic point that Selenium is a library available in variety of language while QTP has entire gamut of tools with it. So if you were to really compare QTP with Selenium then comparison should be based on the library of languages which is offered either of these tools, which in my opinion Selenium wins outright over QTP.
My only intention of writing this post is not claim Selenium victory of QTP but to demonstrate how badly Selenium is compared with QTP at times. There might be things QTP would be good at doing (I left QTP long ago hence can not name any) but to disregard Selenium on the factors I listed herein is highly biased.

Object spying - Sure, you have QTP recorder which does it for you but don't forget that you can test object locator using Selenium IDE and it is not limited to using only Selenium IDE. Firebug with Firefox can be used for same while Chrome has built in development tool bar to test element locator. In case you don't know you can use $$("cssLocator") to test css locator and $x("xpathLocator") to test xPath in both FF and chrome to test application objects. Can you use QTP to test object locators in FF and Chrome?

Debugging code - So QTP comes in with built-in editor and Selenium is defeated in this aspect. Is it? Given the variety of languages Selenium can be used with, you have far greater language editor options with Selenium than with QTP. You have umpteen options with editors like Intellij, Eclipse, Visual Studio than the one available with QTP. When I was working with QTP I could not even conveniently rename test methods spanning across multiple files. Such re factoring is child's play with professional editors you use with Selenium

Recovery Scenarios - This is one of the biggest cheat point of QTP. Add recovery scenarios and tool takes care of working around the update windows. First of all if you add recovery scenario then it slows down the speed of test execution as there would be one listener always looking for such events, which means more recovery scenario and be ready for more slower test execution. Why should you bother about those automatic update windows in your test environment? Should not you proof your test environment against such update windows? If it is windows or FF then disable automatic updates. And best if you can not manage your test environment then out source it to some else like - Sauce Labs or Testing Bot

Testing non browser applications - Well, when did Selenium claim that it can tests window based applications. Selenium is browser automation framework. Comparing Selenium and QTP on this front is like comparing apples with oranges.

Great object Repository of QTP - So QTP can store objects in an external location, all you need to do is to update object repo when your object location changes. And then you find that the easiest way to port QTP scripts from one machine to another is to use Descriptive Programming which indeed means that you should do away with your beloved object repository of QTP. Now coming to absence of object repository mechanism in Selenium. Have you heard of properties files or Page Factory and guess what, you you don't have to do away with any thing to be able to port your Selenium tests from one machine to another.

No built-in Report with Selenium - QTP generates nice test reports and with Selenium - none. Really? When you pick up a language for Selenium you would be using a framework in that language and most probably the framework will provide you the reporting capabilities. For example there is ant task to generate test report in JUnit while TestNG has buit-in reporting mechanism. Google it and you would find similar options in language of your choice.

QTP and QC integration- You bought QTP for test automation now buy QC for test management. What with Selenium Test Management tools. None. There are indeed options - xStudio is one good option for small Selenium teams looking for test management with out spending any extra money. And their commercial options are cheaper than QC. If you are looking to port your test results to Test Management tool then TestLink might be worth a try. In this case you don't have to pay at all.

Which testing role are you playing and why

2012-02-08T14:14:00.001+05:30

Which category of software tester do you fall in?

Manual tester: who gets the requirements (or some times not), works along with development team when they are using non verbal languages (read - java, c#, php etc) and you are using most sophisticated language (read english) to jot down the same thing - client expectations.

Work delegation Engineer: You assign work to fellow testers, question them when they miss deadline or defects, make sure they have enough work for entire week and probably more after heading home. Now you know which category you fall in.

Tool analysis and recommendation engineer: You job is to recommend tools for various situations. Tool could be as simple as xenu link checker or those zillions of automated UI testing and performance tools.

UI Automation test engineer: You automate most pressing use case scenarios so that you and you team could spend time in rational manual testing find valuable defects.

Time pass tester (aka Facebook tester) There is tons of work but you are just uninterested. Why should you work when you reporting manager does not. But yet you need to show some thing end of the day. Well, find that blocked bug and make you point why you can not proceed with testing. As simple as that.

Performance Test Engineer: You understand impact a sloe loading site could have on potential Customers for clients. You also take pro active approach and enlighten your client about significance of performance testing.

Open Source Evangelist You know that it is not tool but you who has the penultimate power. You are aware of open source alternatives of so called "professional" commercial tools and make sure that your client does not have to cough up enormous money on those commercial tools when same goal could be achieve using open source tools

An open billet doux to beloved manager

2012-01-20T18:17:00.002+05:30

Dear manager,

I never imagined that I would ever write an open love letter to you but having worked with you for so long I am drowning in the sea of love and can not help but let the world know of my feelings for you. Since you like the bullet points I am following the same. (Sorry, could not do Microsoft excel for this. Please bear with me for not letting you create pivot table this time). Here I go -

Some time quick and dirty is good. We should have followed it in stand up meetings at least! Those meeting which soon became Sitting Meetings and later Sleeping Meeting.

Forcing me to find significant improvement areas in project every fortnight (sigh). Dear, if there were possibilities to do it so frequently then there must have been some thing badly wrong with project.

You wanted me to test 24/7. Your Keep Testing arguments are always roaming on my mind. And if that was not enough you asked me to write that stupid certificate. I wish I had done that as there are enough foolish companies which consider testing certificate no less than bible. And I would have broken the shackles of this relation.

You asked me for test status every half an hour. I understand your feelings for me but some times we need to be more patient with things.

Forcing me to wear formals, no round neck t-shirt. Despite I work I never had the feeling of having come out of high school. At-least leave these jobs to HR.

Keeping tabs on when I come to office but being happily unaware of the time I step out of office.

Filling appraisal form every three month!!! It used to be yearly, then became half yearly and then quarterly. I am afraid it would soon become monthly and then daily :-o

Feeling proud in making me work every weekend. Remember how you were chastised by client when you told her arrogantly that team worked on weekends and she told you to be ashamed of keeping us away from family.

You expect me to wish you every time we come across. Don't you think such expectation of Public Display of Single Sided Affection is too much to expect.

Making us follow what others are doing. They are doing automation, we should also do, they are doing performance testing, we should also. Sincerely, this life is not enough to fathom your Love Experiments.

Dear manager, I don't have enough words to express my feelings for you. Someone rightly said - employee does not leave company they leave manager. I think I would give it a pause and leave rest for another open love letter.

Your beloved

Test Engineer

n.b. According to one scientific study, Indian IT service industry spends zillions of $$$ on reporting managers whose job is to just assign work and ask status report.

Selenium 2 methods are no more Weird!!!

2012-01-06T20:08:00.000+05:30

tl;dr A long post about using Selenium 1 sort syntax with Selenium 2/WebDriver.

I have seen automation teams suffering from verbosity of web driver way of writing code. One automation guy told me once that he does not want to use Selenium 2 on a brand new project because he finds its syntax utterly weird. But before discussing "Weirdness" of Selenium 2 syntax, let us agree on fact that teams migrating from pure manual testing to automation code find it more weird than ever. While selenium.type("elementLocator", "testData") looks simple to them. Using driver.findElement(By.xPath).sendKeys("testData") looks excessive coding to be able to perform same operation.
Herein I am illustrating the way to wrap Selenium 1 and Selenium 2/WebDriver methods. Don't consider this as the only way of wrapping, I am sure there are better solutions than this.

This is how Selenium1 code (Google again) goes. In the following example there are 5 basic entities -

SelTestCase class - which sets up test bed for Selenium
ActionDriver class - which carries out operations on page
Page element classes - which store element locators
Page object classes - which represents services offered by page and
Test class - yup, it tests.

This example assumes that you have knowledge of testng

Now same example is converted to Selenium 2. Notice that how small SelTestCase class is and there are no more waitForPageToLoad statements. The biggest change is the page element class, which return By object instead of String objects which are returned in case of Selenium 1 page element classes. So if you compare the searchGoogle method in GoogleHomePage class of both Selenium 1 and Selenium 2 examples then both of them use type(GoogleHomePageElements.getSearchBox(), testdata); to perform type operation.

Here is Selenium 2 example -

So do you still find Selenium 2 method calls weird?

What ??? - "com.thoughtworks.selenium.SeleniumException: syntax error"

2012-01-05T23:40:00.000+05:30

At times during development of Selenium tests you come across errors which don't give you any clue what so ever. One such error is -

com.thoughtworks.selenium.SeleniumException: syntax error
or -

missing ) after argument list

One such occurnce of this error is when you use waitForCondition method.

This is one awesome selenium method which saved you from using ugly sleep statements in your scripts. Having read it's API you might consider using it as -

waitForCondition("selenium.isElementPresent(//a[text()='Dashboard'])", "60000");

where first argument - selenium.isElementPresent(//a[text()='Dashboard']), is the condition you expect to be true. And second argument - 60000, is the max wait period till selenium would wait for condition to be true (You don't hard code time in your scripts, do you?).

Looks simple, is not it? Execute (well, after changing locator - //a[text()='Dashboard'] to match your application) it and you end up with -

com.thoughtworks.selenium.SeleniumException: syntax error

Let's try to understand it. Thing, which you should instantly doubt on is the argument -

selenium.isElementPresent(//a[text()='Dashboard'])

Do you usually use it this way? No you do not. isElementPresent is itself a method which takes String argument. So you use it as -

selenium.isElementPresent("//a[text()='Dashboard']")

But then this entire statement is itself first argument for waitForCondition method. So if you try to write -

waitForCondition("selenium.isElementPresent("//a[text()='Dashboard']")", "60000");

in java editor (Eclipse, IntelliJ etc), you would see compilation errors, because in argument -

"selenium.isElementPresent("//a[text()='Dashboard']")"

you used quotation twice. once with "selenium.isElem.... and then with "//a[text()='Dashboar....

And now you realize that you need to escape the second instance of quotation in your argument as

"selenium.isElementPresent(\"//a[text()='Dashboard']\")"

Whole method would look as -

waitForCondition("selenium.isElementPresent(\"//a[text()='Dashboard']\")", "60000");

And you test executes with out any error.

But then you don't hard code locators in the you test, which is - //a[text()='Dashboard'] in our case.

Consider that you are storing them in a class as static methods, returning String locators.
In the following example there is third set of quotation introduced in first argument of waitForCondition method to concatenate UserDashboard.getDashboardLocator() with rest of the string.

Updating Sauce Labs dashboard with Selenium 2 test results

2012-01-03T14:26:00.000+05:30

If you have not yet known of Sauce Labs, Sauce Labs specialises in executing Selenium tests on cloud. If you don't want to manage those umpteen configurations for executing your Selenium tests, then Sauce Labs is the answer. I am not going to explain executing your Selenium tests on Sauce Labs as there is enough documentation on Sauce Labs which already explains this. What I was stuck with is updating test results on Sauce Labs dashboard. Status "finished" does not indicate about success/failure of tests and you may probably not have time to see log/video of each and every finished tests.

I posted query to Sauce Labs and got to know about the Sauce Labs REST api. But things were still not very clear as I was not sure of on what basis I could update test results in Sauce Labs dashboard.
How do I get to know from a tests whether it succeeded or not and then update the Sauce Labs dashboard. This is when TestNG came to my rescue. TestNG ITestResult could be injected in tear down method to find the status of test execution and on the basis of this Sauce Labs dashboard could be set with pass or fail status.

I also found it useful to update the job name with name of test method to make Sauce Labs dashboard results more comprehensible. This is how my tear down method looks -

And here is the Sauce Labs dashboard with test status -