Taking Full page screenshot of Web page using Selenium Webdriver

While executing a testcase, if the testcase fails, then we need to take a screenshot of the page for error reporting. This can also be done by using Selenium Webdriver.
We can use the following syntax  for capturing and saving full page screenshot.
File screenshot = ((TakesScreenshot)driver).getScreenshotAs(OutputType.FILE);

Then it can be stored in our local drive using the following syntax
FileUtils.copyFile(screenshot, new File(“D:\\screenshot.png”));

Now, here is the small example of webdriver script by which we can capture the full page screenshot.

package Screenshot;
import java.io.File;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.OutputType;
import org.openqa.selenium.TakesScreenshot;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class FullPage_Screenshot {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(); 
         
        try{
            driver.get("http://google.co.in"); 
            driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(20, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
            driver.manage().window().maximize();
            
            //driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@id='gbqfq']")).sendKeys("test");
            driver.findElement(By.xpath("//input[@id='gbqfq1']")).sendKeys("test");
            System.out.println("Entered data in textfield");    
        }   
        catch (Exception e) 
        {  
            File scrFile = ((TakesScreenshot)driver).getScreenshotAs(OutputType.FILE);  
            FileUtils.copyFile(scrFile, new File("D:\\screenShot1.png"));
            System.out.println("Screenshot is captured for failed testcase");
        }  
    }  
}

// driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//input[@id=’gbqfq’]”)).sendKeys(“test”);

If we execute this statement, then we can enter data into the text field and the testcase will pass. So, it will not take the screenshot.

So, I  have commented out the correct statement so that the testcase will fail and screenshot will be captured.

Hope this will help you 🙂

Types of Locators to identify the WebElements

A web page consists of set of different web elements. We need to know what are the different elements on a web page and then how to locate the web elements.

Here are some common web elements we encounter most of the time while automating the web page.
Text box
Drop-down List
Checkbox
Radio button
Hyperlink
TextArea
Image
Button
Window

An element locator is simply a method for finding an element on the web page.
We can use the following locators based on priority to identify the elements on the web page.
– Locating By Id
– Locating By Name
– Locating By Class
– Locating Hyperlinks by LinkText
– Locating By Xpath
– Locating By CSS

Steps to find the element locator for the web element:
-> Search for the locator which will find the element by ID or proceed to the next step.
-> Search for the locator which will find the element by Name or proceed to the next step.
-> Search for the locator which will find the element by Class or proceed to the next step.
-> Search for the locator which will find the element by LinkText or proceed to the next step.
-> Search for the locator which will find the element by XPath or proceed to the next step.
-> Search for the locator which will find the element by CSS or proceed to the next step.

While following the above steps to locate elements, a question may come to our mind that why there are so many types of locators instead of any one to identify the elements.

Element Locator is a way of finding the HTML element on the web page. Every HTML element on the page we are testing with Selenium will have a unique Name or ID that we can always refer to. But, usually we are doing black box testing and have no access to the developer’s code and there is difficulty in finding the correct elements due to absence of unique identifier like Name or ID. Also, there are some web applications which recreates the element ID each time dynamically when the application is run. In this case, it is very difficult to handle if we depend on only one type of locator.

Some basic syntax for different locators:
1. By ID:
driver.findElement(By.id(“element id”))

2. By NAME:
driver.findElement(By.name(“element name”))

3. By CLASS:
driver.findElement(By.className(“element class”))

4. By Link:
driver.findElement(By.link(“link text”))

5. By XPath:
driver.findElement(By.xpath(“xpath expression”))

6. By CSS Selector:
driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(“css selector”))

These locators can be identified by using Firebug and Firepath plugins in Firefox Browser

Create and Execute your first Webdriver script using Eclipse

I have already posted in my last blog how to install and Configure Webdriver using Eclipse and Java. Now, its time to write the Java code for your testcase of the web application. I will give one simple example of creating a webdriver script with explanation in the form of comments.

For this, we need to write the following code into Eclipse.

package MyPackage;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

public class MyClass {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();  //Create a new instance of Firefox Browser
        driver.get("https://www.google.co.in/"); //Open the URL in firefox browser
        driver.manage().window().maximize(); //Maximize the Browser window
        String str = driver.getCurrentUrl(); //Get the current page URL and store the value in variable 'str'
        System.out.println("The current URL is " + str); //Print the value of variable in the console
    }
}

Now, click on the Run Menu of the Eclipse window to execute the script.

As an output, It will open the firefox browser , maximize the browser window, get the current page URL and print the value in the Console.

Setup and configure Selenium Webdriver With Eclipse and Java

In this post, we will discuss how to setup and configure Selenium Webdriver using Eclipse IDE and Java.

Step – 1: In the first step, download and install JDK (Java Development Kit) in your system

For downloading Java, you need to visit the following link http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

 

Step – 2: In the second step, download and install Eclipse from the link below

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

 

Step – 3: Download the Selenium Java Client Driver from

http://docs.seleniumhq.org/download/

Click on the Download link for Java language, you will get a ZIP file named “selenium-2.43.0.zip”. Then extract the contents of this ZIP file on any location say “D:\selenium-2.43.0\”. The unzipped folder contains the ‘libs’ folder , 2 jar files and Change Log.

 

Step – 4: Configure Eclipse to work with Webdriver

→ Double click on ‘Eclipse.exe’ to launch eclipse

→ When asked to select for a workspace, just accept the default location. Or, you can change the location

→ Create a new project through File → New → Java Project. Name the project as “MyProject”.

→ Right-click on the newly created project and select New > Package, and name that package as “MyPackage”.

→ Create a new Java class under MyPackage by right-clicking on it and then selecting New > Class, and then name it as “MyClass”. Your Eclipse IDE should look like the image below.

→ Right-click on MyProject and select “Build Path” and then “Configure Build Path”.

→ This will open the Libraries tab in Properties dialog. Then on click “Add External JARs..”

→ Navigate to D:\selenium-2.43.0\ (or any other location where you saved the extracted contents of “selenium-2.43.0.zip”).

→ Add all the JAR files inside and outside the “libs” folder.

These are the Jar files present outside the Libs folder

 

These are the Jar files present inside the Libs folder

 

→ Then your Properties dialog should look similar to the image below.

→ Finally, click on the OK button and we are done with importing Selenium libraries into our project.  Now, we are ready to write our test in Eclipse and run it in WebDriver. I will post about the first Webdriver script using Eclipse in my next blog.

 

How Much Java is needed to learn for writing Selenium Script

Selenium is a web automation tool which enables us to automate the web browsers. Selenium Webdriver supports different languages like Java, python, c#, Ruby or other. So we can choose any language to write our script. If we want to learn Selenium, we need to have basic knowledge about one programming language – don’t have to be an expert.

Here I have listed down some of the Java essentials which we need to learn before jumping to Selenium Scripting

• OOPS concept – Class, Objects, Abstraction, Polymorphism, Inheritance and Encapsulation
• Programming essentials – Object Instances, variables, method overloading/overriding concepts and packages, Constructors,Abstract Class, Interface etc..
• Control Statements – If statements, While, do-While, Switch – This will help us in writing the scripts for multiple scenario statements and decision making scenarios.
• Looping statements – This can be used to execute the same statements multiple times for ex; iterating through a large table to find a record and logging into 5 different accounts using same method.
• Arrays Concepts – We don’t want to keep writing variables all over our test scripts. For that we need to create a placeholder for similar type of variables. So, concept of Array allows us to string related variables together into one single variable that’s easy to use.
• Threads and Multithreading Concepts – Multithreaded program contains multiple activities that can run concurrently and each part can handle different task at the same time making optimal use of the available resources. That will help us in achieving better performance.
• Java Collections Framework – This framework is provided in the java.util package. Objects can be stored, retrieved, and manipulated as elements of collections. Collections can be used in various scenarios like Storing phone numbers, Employee names database etc. They are basically used to group multiple elements into a single unit.
• File Streams – This will be helpful in externalization of data through CSV, Excel or Java Properties file.

• Exception Handling – When an error occurs in a Java program it usually results in an exception being thrown. Java exception handling enables the Java applications to handle the errors. Exception handling is a very important aspect of writing robust Java applications or components.

There are many things in Java. But we need these basic things before jumping to Selenium scripting.

Regards,
Pratima Rout
QA Engg., Mindfire Solutions