What is Selenide?¶ ↑

Selenide is a library for easier using of Selenium WebDriver for automated tests in Java.

@Test
public void testLogin() {
  open("/login");
  setValue(By.name("user.name"), "johny");
  followLink(By.id("submit"));
  waitUntil(By.id("username"), hasText("Hello, Johny!"), 5000);

  assertThat($("#insuranceDetailsHeader").getText(), equalTo("Страховые полисы"));
  assertThat($$("#paymentScheduleTable tr").size(), equalTo(7));
}

Though Selenium WebDriver is a great library for operating web browser, it’s API is too low-level. Developer needs to write some boilerplate code to create/shutdown webdriver, to search radio buttons, to wait for javascript interactions etc. With Selenide, You don’t need to operate with Selenium WebDriver directly. WebDriver will be automatically created/deleted during test start/finished.

Probably two the most noticeable methods are (inspired from jQuery):

$("#insuranceDetailsHeader") - returns WebElement matching given CSS selector
$$("#insuranceDetailsHeader tr td") - returns list of WebElements matching given CSS selector

How to start?¶ ↑

Just put selenide.jar to your project. If you are using Maven (Ivy, Gradle or whatever dependency management), you can add the following dependency:

dependencies {
  testCompile 'com.codeborne:selenide:1.9'
}

Include the following methods and let’s start!

import static com.codeborne.selenide.Navigation.*
import static com.codeborne.selenide.DOM.*

Until tutorial is ready, you can find some Selenide usages in the example project Hangman: github.com/asolntsev/hangman/blob/master/selenide_1_9/test/ee/uitest/HangmanSpec.java

What benefits gives Selenide over plain Selenium?¶ ↑

Selenium is not a testing library, it just allows you to manipulate browser. Selenide provides a concise API for using Selenium WebDriver in UI tests:

Transparent WebDriver

You don’t need to operate with WebDriver directly. With Selenide, setUp/tearDown methods do it for you.

Convenience methods

Selenide contains convenient methods for operating controls like textfield, radiobutton and selectbox.

Ajax support

when testing Ajax applications, we often need to wait until some element changes its state. Selenide has built-in methods for waiting.

Screenshots

Selenide automatically takes screenshot of the browser window if test has failed.

Selenium bugs

We know that Selenium has some bugs/disadvantages. For instance, when settings field value, the “onChange” event is not always triggered. Selenide contains workarounds for such issues.

IE

Our experience says that Selenium has some problems with IE. Selenide contains several workarounds for IE problems.

You can find more details below.

Convenience methods¶ ↑

Selenide contains several methods that make your tests shorter and more readable:

@Test
public void canFillComplexForm() {
  open("/client/registration");
  setValue(By.name("user.name"), "johny");
  selectRadio("user.gender", "male");
  selectOption(By.name("user.preferredLayout"), "plain");
  selectOptionByText(By.name("user.securityQuestion"), "What is my first car?");
  followLink(By.id("submit"));
}

Functional style¶ ↑

Combining JUnit and Selenium, you can write tests like this:

UGLY EXAMPLES:
assertTrue(webdriver.findElement(By.id("topic")).isDisplayed());
assertEquals("Agile engineering practices", webdriver.findElement(By.id("topic")).getText());

With Selenide you can express the same test in a more functional style which is more readable:

GOOD EXAMPLES:
assertElement(By.id("topic"), visible);
assertElement(By.id("topic"), hasText("Agile engineering practices"));

Other available methods include:

$(By.id("topic")).shouldBe(hidden);
$("#topic").shouldBe(hidden);
$("#password").shouldHave(attribute("name", "user.password"));
$("#password").shouldNotHave(cssClass("okMessage"));

Ajax support¶ ↑

When testing Ajax applications we often need to wait until some element changes its state. Selenide has built-in methods for waiting:

Selenide allows testing such cases in one-line:

waitFor(By.id("topic"));
waitUntil(By.id("topic"), hidden);
waitUntil(By.id("password"), hasNotClass("errorField"));

etc.

What about IE?¶ ↑

Our experience says that Selenium WebDriver doesn’t always work correctly with IE browser. But we typically want to test our code with IE because many users still use it.

• Body tag doesn’t appear immediately - we need to wait for it.

• IE caches pages - we need to clear cache after every test and generate unique urls.

• IE crashed when running too many tests at a time. Making pauses between helps.

Selenide contains some workarounds for IE. It was sufficient to make IE working in our projects, but probably you will encounter more problems in your projects - feel free to report them and suggest your workarounds!

Best practices¶ ↑

Here we will provide some examples how Selenide can be used to write short and expressive acceptance tests.

LONG: assertEquals("EPP", getElement(By.tagName("title")).getText());
SHORTER: assertElement(By.tagName("title"), hasText("EPP"));
SHORT: assertEquals("EPP", title());

LONG:   assertEquals(2, getElements(By.className("tellimus")).size());
SHORT:  assertEquals(2, $$(".tellimus").size());

LONG:  assertThat(getElement(By.id("documentsTable")).findElement(By.tagName("tbody")).findElements(By.tagName("tr")).size(), equalTo(4));
SHORT: assertThat($$("#documentsTable tbody tr").size(), equalTo(4));

Resources¶ ↑

• Presentation at TopConf conference (Tallinn, 1. Nov 2012)

• Article on Habrahabr.ru (in Russian)

Changelog¶ ↑

1.9 (Snapshot, planned release date: December 2012)¶ ↑

• No need for waitFor/waitUntil methods. All the $(), getElement() and shouldXXX() methods wait for a few seconds until element appears or condition gets satisfied.

• Added support for PageObjects - see method DOM.page(Class)

• Added methods $().find() with index parameter

• Added method $().setValue()

• Added method DOM.getSelectedRadio()

• Updated to selenium-java:2.26.0

• Added initial support for phantomjs headless webkit browser (-Dbrowser=phantomjs)

• Added support for custom WebDriver initialization by defining com.codeborne.selenide.WebDriverProvider implementation via “browser” system property.

1.8 (Released 29.11.2012)¶ ↑

• Changed Selectors.byText() behaviour - now it matches THE WHOLE TEXT, not a substring.

• A new method Selectors.withText() has been added that matches substring.

• Added option “selenide.start-maximized” (true/false) instead of (deprecated) option “chrome.switches”.

• Added support for By.CssSelector to method DOM.getJQuerySelector()

1.7 (Released 22.10.2012)¶ ↑

• Added file uploading functionality (file is taken from test classpath)

• Added methods $().should(), $().shouldHave, $().shouldBe(), $().shouldNot, $().shouldNotBe, $().find()

• Added method $().toString() for logging WebElement in human-readable format.

• Added wait-methods with CSS Selector parameter

• Added method DOM.confirm() for clicking on confirmation dialog (alert)

• Added support for Opera browser

• Added method Navigation.refresh() for reloading current page

• Added condition “present”, “notPresent”, “exist”.

• Added selector “byText” and condition “matchesText” for matching elements by regex

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Authors¶ ↑

Selenide was created by Codeborne, an software development company based in Tallinn, Estonia.

The main committers are:

• Andrei Solntsev <andrei@codeborne.com>

• Anton Keks <anton@codeborne.com>

• Maksim Säkki <maksim@codeborne.com>

• Vadim Gerasimov <vadim@codeborne.com>

License¶ ↑

GPL 1.0