In the new article from the Web Automation Series, we will talk about creating a data-driven NUnit test automating all major web technologies such as React, Angular, Vue.js, and many more. Many people speculate that Selenium WebDriver is outdated and cannot work for modern web technologies, thus promoting other questionable tools such as Cypress, Playwright, Protractor (which is going away). Again if you apply the proper design patterns and best practices, you can make almost any tool work. I am not entirely against the mentioned solutions. You can still succeed. I am just saying that many people started recently saying awful stuff about Selenium. I can say the same about these solutions. With the proper knowledge, you can easily automate everything with Selenium. This article is the proof.
When you click on a particular technology, the corresponding app written on it opens.
The Use Case
What are we going to test? Recently, I watched a webinar organized by the Test team of JetBrains. It was OK. It was in Java. The most helpful thing I got was this fantastic website on which we will experiment. The website is called TodoMVC and is implementing the same TODO app functionality using 30+ most popular web technologies. Everything is open-source and free.
We will create a single data-driven test using NUnit, where we will open 20+ technologies. Then we will add a few TODO items, mark as complete the first one and verify the numbers of the items left.
The Selenium Test
I suggest to check out NUnit Cheat Sheet. Below you can see how a single test looks like automating the jQuery TODO app. On purpose I organized the login into few private methods.
<Test>
Public Sub VerifyTodoListCreatedSuccessfully_When_jQuery()
_driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://todomvc.com/")
OpenTechnologyApp("Vanilla ES6")
AddNewToDoItem("Clean the car")
AddNewToDoItem("Clean the house")
AddNewToDoItem("Buy Ketchup")
GetItemCheckBox("Buy Ketchup").Click()
AssertLeftItems(2)
End Sub
Private Sub AssertLeftItems(ByVal expectedCount As Integer)
Dim resultSpan = WaitAndFindElement(By.XPath("//footer/*/span | //footer/span"))
If expectedCount <= 0 Then
Me.ValidateInnerTextIs(resultSpan, $"{expectedCount} item left")
Else
Me.ValidateInnerTextIs(resultSpan, $"{expectedCount} items left")
End If
End Sub
Private Sub ValidateInnerTextIs(ByVal resultSpan As IWebElement, ByVal expectedText As String)
_webDriverWait.Until(SE.ExpectedConditions.TextToBePresentInElement(resultSpan, expectedText))
End Sub
Private Function GetItemCheckBox(ByVal todoItem As String) As IWebElement
Return WaitAndFindElement(By.XPath($"//label[text()='{todoItem}']/preceding-sibling::input"))
End Function
Private Sub AddNewToDoItem(ByVal todoItem As String)
Dim todoInput = WaitAndFindElement(By.XPath("//input[@placeholder='What needs to be done?']"))
todoInput.SendKeys(todoItem)
_actions.Click(todoInput).SendKeys(Keys.Enter).Perform()
End Sub
Private Sub OpenTechnologyApp(ByVal name As String)
Dim technologyLink = WaitAndFindElement(By.LinkText(name))
technologyLink.Click()
End Sub
Private Function WaitAndFindElement(ByVal locator As By) As IWebElement
Return _webDriverWait.Until(SE.ExpectedConditions.ElementExists(locator))
End FunctionThe method WaitAndFindElement waits for the web elements to appear on the page, and then we return them. We use the WebDriverWait + the ExpectedConditions methods that come from the DotNetSeleniumExtras.WaitHelpers NuGet package. We use another method part of the same package in the ValidateInnerTextIs method - TextToBePresentInElement.
Another interesting point is that I used lots of XPath Axes locators for most elements to make the tests stable and maintainable. You can check two articles that can help you write maintainable good locators - Most Underrated WebDriver Locator – XPath and Most Exhaustive XPath Locators Cheat Sheet. I suggest you learn to write the XPath yourself than relying on plugins since they generate, most of the time, ugly, not maintainable XPath.
Another interesting point is how we add a TODO item to the list. We don’t have a submit button, but instead, we need to press Enter. To do that, we use the Actions class, which allows us to do all sorts of advanced interactions. To learn all different actions you can do in WebDriver check - Most Complete Selenium WebDriver C# Cheat Sheet
Data-driven Test for 22 Web Technologies
To test all major technologies in a single test, we can use the NUnit TestCase attribute. Next, the TestInit method marked with the SetUp attribute executes before each test. There we start the browser each time and initialize the WebDriverWait + Actions classes. Finally, the TestCleanup method marked with the TearDown attribute closes the browser.
<TestFixture>
Public Class TodoTests
Private Const WAIT_FOR_ELEMENT_TIMEOUT As Integer = 30
Private _driver As IWebDriver
Private _webDriverWait As WebDriverWait
Private _actions As Actions
<SetUp>
Public Sub TestInit()
_driver = New ChromeDriver()
_driver.Manage().Window.Maximize()
_webDriverWait = New WebDriverWait(_driver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(WAIT_FOR_ELEMENT_TIMEOUT))
_actions = New Actions(_driver)
End Sub
<TearDown>
Public Sub TestCleanup()
_driver.Quit()
End Sub
<TestCase("Backbone.js")>
<TestCase("AngularJS")>
<TestCase("React")>
<TestCase("Vue.js")>
<TestCase("CanJS")>
<TestCase("Ember.js")>
<TestCase("KnockoutJS")>
<TestCase("Marionette.js")>
<TestCase("Polymer")>
<TestCase("Angular 2.0")>
<TestCase("Dart")>
<TestCase("Elm")>
<TestCase("Closure")>
<TestCase("Vanilla JS")>
<TestCase("jQuery")>
<TestCase("cujoJS")>
<TestCase("Spine")>
<TestCase("Dojo")>
<TestCase("Mithril")>
<TestCase("Kotlin + React")>
<TestCase("Firebase + AngularJS")>
<TestCase("Vanilla ES6")>
Public Sub VerifyTodoListCreatedSuccessfully(ByVal technology As String)
_driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://todomvc.com/")
OpenTechnologyApp(technology)
AddNewToDoItem("Clean the car")
AddNewToDoItem("Clean the house")
AddNewToDoItem("Buy Ketchup")
GetItemCheckBox("Buy Ketchup").Click()
AssertLeftItems(2)
End Sub
<Test>
Public Sub VerifyTodoListCreatedSuccessfully_When_jQuery()
_driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://todomvc.com/")
OpenTechnologyApp("Vanilla ES6")
AddNewToDoItem("Clean the car")
AddNewToDoItem("Clean the house")
AddNewToDoItem("Buy Ketchup")
GetItemCheckBox("Buy Ketchup").Click()
AssertLeftItems(2)
End Sub
'Private methods
End Class