Something I’m working on currently requires some automation of a web browser, so what a perfect opportunity to get some exposure to Selenium.
In this post I’ll outline the basics of creating and running a simple Selenium test using Selenium and NUnit. The implementation language will be C#. To get started, you will need to download the following:
- The Selenium Client Driver for C#.
- NUnit for Windows.
Extract the Selenium Client Driver files, these DLL’s will be referenced in the Visual Studio project we create. Install NUnit using the .msi installer.
Now, let’s create the actual test:
- Launch Visual Studio 2010 and create a new class library project.
- Add a reference to nunit.framework.dll. This can be found under the NUnit installation directory at ‘bin\net-2.0\framework’.
- Add references to all the DLL’s contained in the Selenium Client Driver package you downloaded earlier.
- We’re now ready to add the code that will run a Selenium test. Add the following code to your class library project:
using NUnit.Framework; using OpenQA.Selenium; using OpenQA.Selenium.IE; namespace FirstSeleniumTest { [TestFixture] public class SeleniumTest { private IWebDriver driver; [SetUp] public void SetUp() { driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(); } [Test] public void TestGoogle() { driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://www.google.com"); } [TearDown] public void TearDown() { driver.Quit(); driver.Dispose(); } } }
The above code should be pretty easy to understand. Notice the annotations around the functions.
- [SetUp] – This is where any test setup should be completed. In the above example we’re creating a new instance of InternetExplorerDriver, setting it up for our test to run later.
- [Test] – This is where the test steps are defined. In this example, we’re just navigating to Google.
- [TearDown] – In this section, any steps to be taken to cleanup the environment after your test has run can be defined. Here, all we’ll do is close Internet Explorer
Now that we have written a simple test, let’s try running it using NUnit. Before moving on, ensure that the above code builds successfully in your environment.
To run the test it’s just a matter of launching NUnit and opening up the DLL built from the Visual Studio project created above. You should see the ‘TestGoogle’ test listed. Simply select the test and hit the ‘Run’ button to initiate the test. You will see Internet Explorer launch, and then close.
One thing you may need to do, depending on your IE version, is to disable protected mode for Internet and Restricted Zones in Internet Explorer Security Settings (don’t forget to re-enable these once you’ve finished experimenting with Selenium).
In a future post, I’ll outline how to do more complex tasks during your tests such as taking screenshots and navigating around web pages under tests.