Windows UI Automation

Windows UI Automation Tutorial

Windows provides a programmatic interface to automate various elements.
Windows Automation saves time and effort in executing regression test cases.

Let us start with an example to automate calculator perform a simple operation of 2+5

Step 1:Open Visual Studio and create a new console application
Step 2:Navigate Tools>NuGet Package Manger>Manage Nuget Packages for solution... and click on it
Step 3:In the search bar find system.windows.automation and add UIaComWrapper to current solution

Step 4: Add "using System.Windows.Automation;" namespace
Step 5:Now open calculator
Step 6:In visual studio navigate to TOOLS>SPY ++(x64)
Step 7:In the Microsoft Spy++ pop up window click on Find window
Step 8:Now drop the pointer to 2 in calculator and click on ok

Step 9:Now in the Inspect window click on properties.

Step 10:In the properties note down the control id value and convert it into decimal

In this case on conerting 84(HEX) TO DECIMAL we get 132

Step 11:Repeat from steps 7 to 10 to find control id value for digit "5" "=" and "+" respectively

Final Program


using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Automation;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.IO;
namespace Windows_UI
{

  class Program
    {

    
        static void Main(string[] args)

    {
           Program automate = new Program();

//Calls automate function
automate.Func();
}
public void Func()
{
AutomationElement _calculatorAutomationElement, r2, rplus, r5, requal;
Process _calculatorProcess;

//Opens Calculator
_ calculatorProcess = Process.Start(@"calc.exe");

int ct = 0;

do
{
//Finds if automation element is available

         _calculatorAutomationElement = AutomationElement.RootElement.FindFirst              (TreeScope.Children, new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.NameProperty,
            "Calculator"));                   ++ct;

Thread.Sleep(100);
}
while (_calculatorAutomationElement == null && ct < 50);

//Finds the digit 2 through automation ID

      r2 =_calculatorAutomationElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants,newPropertyCondition
             (AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty, "132"));

      //Presses the digit 2
            GetInvokePattern(r2).

       Invoke();
            Thread.Sleep(100);

//Finds the digit + through automation ID

        rplus = _calculatorAutomationElement.FindFirst
             (TreeScope.Descendants,newPropertyCondition
             (AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty, "93"));

//Presses the digit +
GetInvokePattern(rplus).Invoke();
Thread.Sleep(100);

//Finds the digit 5 through automation ID

          r5=_calculatorAutomationElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants,newPropertyCondition
             (AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty, "135"));

//Presses the digit 5
GetInvokePattern(r5).Invoke();
Thread.Sleep(100);

//Finds the equal operation through automation ID

         requal = _calculatorAutomationElement.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants,newPropertyCondition
             (AutomationElement.AutomationIdProperty, "121"));

//Presses the equal symbol
GetInvokePattern(requal).Invoke();
Thread.Sleep(100);

}

    //This function clicks the automation element
     InvokePattern                                      GetInvokePattern(AutomationElement element)

{
return element.GetCurrentPattern(InvokePattern.Pattern) as InvokePattern;
}
}

}

HOME

Automation Tutorial

Selenium automates web browsers.

To begin tutorial click on the button.

Automate the boring day to day windows tasks.

To learn about Windows UI Automation click on the button.

Automate various tasks on many Virtual Machines simultaneously.
To learn about VM Workstation automation click on the button.

To learn about essential C# tricks needed for automation click on the button

Vmware Automation

VMware Automation

Vmware provides inbuilt support to automate various operations on a virtual machine such as taking snapshot,starting VM,Running program in VM and so on. The vmrun command is used to control Virtual machines. It provides support both to WorkStation and VSphere client.

This tutorial is dedicated to control Virtual Machines only on WorkStation.

Getting started with VMRUN command

Pre-Requistes:

.Have a workstation installed on your host machine
Install any Virtual machine of your choice in the WorkStation
Locate the path of vmrun.exe file.

32 Bit Machine -The default location is C:\Program Files \VMware\VMware VIX
64 bit machine -The default location is C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware VIX

Locate path of .vmx or .vmtm file

The default path is C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\My Virtual Machines\Windows 8X62\Windows 8x64.vmx

Steps 1: In the host machine where workstation is installed open command prompt in administrator mode.

Step 2: Navigate and open vmrun.exe.

In this case it is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware VIX

Step 3:Now type vmrun in the command prompt.

If successful you should get a list of Vmrun commands.

Vmrun Commands:

The commonly used commands are shown below:

Example:To perform the following tasks:

Start VM with a known username and password
Run calculator program in VM
Take snapshot of the VM

The below command starts the vm where username is "gpb" and password is "a"

vmrun -gu gpb -gp a start "C:\Users\gpb\Documents\Virtual Machines\Windows 8 x64(2)\Windows 8 x64 (2).vmx"

The below command runs calaculator program

vmrun -gu gpb -gp a runprograminguest "C:\Users\gpb\Documents\Virtual Machines\Windows 8 x64 (2)\Windows 8 x64 (2).vmx" -nowait -interactive "C:\Windows\system32\calc.exe"

The following command takes a snapshot with snapshot name as demo

vmrun snapshot "C:\Users\gpb\Documents\Virtual Machines\Windows 8 x64 (2)\Windows 8 x64 (2).vmx" demo

To run all these commands together we can store these commands in a batch file and execute the corresponding batch script.

To learn about creating batch files click on next tutorial!

Basics of BATCH File

Basics of BATCH(.BAT) File

Introduction

A batch file is a script file in windows.

It is a plane text file which contains series of commands which needs to be executed by command line interpreter.

Batch files have .bat as extension.

Steps to create a batch file:

Step 1:Create a new text document

Step 2:Rename the file as per your choice and in the extension replace ".txt" by ".bat"

Step 3:Now Right click on the bat file and click on edit

Step 4:Type commands which needs to be executed and save the file.

Basic Commands:

cls -This command is used to clear the screen

ECHO - This command is used to display output to screen

The other variants of ECHO are:

1.ECHO OFF- Doesnt display DOS commnads on the screen

2.ECHO ON- Displays DOS commands on the screen

.Timeout seconds-It waits for specified amount of time(Seconds) before executing next command.User can skip the timer by pressing any key

.Pause - Pauses the running of a batch file and displays the message "Press any key to continue ..." on the screen

The other variants of Pause commands are:

1.pause {Displays "Press any key to continue ...".}

2.pause < nul {Waits with no comment.}

3.pause Do you want to continue? {Displays "Do you want to continue?" with "Press any key to continue ..." on the next line.}.

SET- Set will view the DOS environment or create, change, or delete environment values.

Generate Random Number in C#

Generate Random number in C#

C# provides random class which is defined in System.random namespace which is used to generate random numbers.

Methods

Next()- Returns a random non negative integer value.
Next(int minvalue,int maxvalue)- Returns a random number between the specified range. Exclusive of the maxvalue
NextBytes()- Fills the array of specified array of bytes with random numbers.
NextDouble()- Returns a random number between 0.0 to 1.0

Example

Random number =new Random();

//To generate random integer
int any_integer =number.Next();

//Generate random integer from 1-12
int mont=number.Next(1,13);

//Generate a random double number between 0.0 to 1.0
double numb =number.NextDouble();

//Generate random numbers in specified array
Byte[] b = new Byte[10];
number.NextBytes(b);

//Print the array
for(int m=0;m<10;m++)

Console.Write(b[m]+"\t");

Generate GUID number

GUID represents a globally unique identifier. It is used to create a unique key.
Syntax: Guid.NewGuid();
Example:

 string key = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
 Console.WriteLine(key);

Click on the button to learn about bat file

Inspect Elements in Selenium

WebElement represents an HTML element.
HTML elements are written with a start tag, with an end tag, with the content in between:
< tagname > content < /tagname >

Browser tools for inspecting web elements:

Firefox browser:To inspect an element in firefox browser either right click on the desired element and select inspect element(Q) or Press F12 and drop cursor to the desired element.

Chrome Browser:To inspect an element in chrome browser either right click on the desired element and select inspect or Press F12 and drop cursor to the desired element.

Internet Explorer:To inspect an element in IE browser either right click on the desired element and select inspect or Press F12 and go to DOM Explorer tab to inspect an element.

Example: Let us learn to inspect elements in www.google.com using FireFox web browser.

Step 1: Open firefox browser

Step 2: Go to www.google.com

Step 3: Now press F12 function key.

Step 4: To inspect an element click on the cursor in the emulator tab and drop it to the desired element of choice. In this case we drop in google search bar as shown below

Step 7: A block of code gets highlighted as shown in the figure.Now identify elements such as ID,CLASS,CLASSNAME,TAGNAME in the block

Step 8: Copy the value of the available element and use it in your code.

Example:In this case we get the value of ID as "gs_htif0"

//Find search bar and send "Hey"

IWebElement search = chrome.FindElement(By.Id("gs_htif0"));
search.SendKeys("hey");

In our next tutorial let us learn to find Xpath of a webelement using FireBug and FirePath.

1.Introduction To Selenium
2.Setup Selenium in Visual Studio
3.First Automation Program
4.Browser Navigation in Selenium
5.Inspect WebElements in Selenium
6.Find XPATH using FireBug and FirePath
7.WebElements in Selenium
8.Implicit and Explicit wait in Selenium
9.Select class in Selenium
10.Cookies in Selenium
11.Capture Screenshot in Selenium
12.Reading Data from Excel sheet and using it in WebDriver

WebElements in Selenium

Selenium provides IWebElement interface through which user controls the elements in the page.

The IWebElement type exposes the following members:

Displayed - Gets a value whether or not this element is displayed.
Enabled - Gets a value indicating whether or not this element is enabled.
Location - Gets a point object containing the coordinates of the upper-left corner of this element relative to the upper-left corner of the page.
Selected - Gets a value indicating whether or not this element is selected.
Size - Gets a Size object containing the height and width of this element.
TagName - Gets the tag name of this element.
Text - Gets the inner Text of this element, without any leading or trailing whitespace, and with other white space collapsed.

The Methods available are as follows

Clear- Clears the content of this element.
Click- Clicks this element.
FindElement- Finds the first IWebElement using the given method.
FindElements- Finds all the IWebElement within the current context using the given mechanism
GetAttribute- Gets the value of the specified attribute for this element.
GetCssValue- Gets the value of a CSS property of this element.
SendKeys - Simulates typing text into the element.
Submit - Submits this element to the web server.

findElement method of WebDriver returns WebElement.
The findElement() method accepts something as a Parameter/Argument and which is By Object. By is the mechanism used to locate elements within a document with the help of locator value.

Locating Element using By Strategy
Locating elements in WebDriver is done by using the findElement(By.locator()) method.
The findElement methods take a locator or query object called ‘By’.
"BY" strategies in c# are listed below:

By ID

id(String id) : By – This is the most efficient and preferred way to locate an element, as most of the times IDs are unique.
It takes a parameter of String which is a Value of ID attribute and it returns a BY object to findElement() method.
With this strategy, If no element has a matching id attribute, a NoSuchElementException will be raised.
Command – driver.findElement(By.id(“Element ID”));
Example: WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("submit"));

By Name

name(String name) : By – This is also an efficient way to locate an element but again the problem is same as with ID that UI developer make it having non-unique names on a page or auto-generating the names.
It takes a parameter of String which is a Value of NAME attribute and it returns a BY object to findElement() method.
With this strategy, the first element with the name attribute value matching the location will be returned. If no element has a matching name attribute, a NoSuchElementException will be raised.
Command – driver.findElement(By.name(“Element NAME”));
Example:WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.name("firstname"));

By ClassName

className(String className) : By – This finds elements based on the value of the CLASS attribute. It takes a parameter of String which is a Value of CLASS attribute and it returns a BY object to findElement() method.
If an element has many classes then this will match against each of them.
Example: WebElement parentElement = driver.findElement(By.className("button"))

By TagName

tagName(String name) : By – With this you can find elements by their TAGNAMES. It takes a parameter of String which is a Value of TAG attribute and it returns a BY object to findElement() method.
Command – driver.findElement(By.tagName(“Element TAGNAME”));
Example: WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.tagName("button"));

By LinkText & PartialLinkText

linkText(String linkText) : By – With this you can find elements of “a” tags(Link) with the link names. Use this when you know link text used within an anchor tag. It takes a parameter of String which is a Value of LINKTEXT attribute and it returns a BY object to findElement() method.
Command – driver.findElement(By.linkText(“Element LINKTEXT”));

Command – driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText(“Element LINKTEXT”));

By XPath

xpath(String xpathexpression) : By – It is most popular and majorly used locating element technique or the easiest way to locate element in WebDriver. It takes a parameter of String which is a XPATHEXPRESSION and it returns a BY object to findElement() method.
Command-driver.findElement(By.xpath(“Element XPATHEXPRESSION”));
Example:driver.findElement(By.xpath(“.//*[@id='Email']”));

SendKeys

The send Keys method is used to send keystrokes to web elements such as textbox,password box etc.
Syntax: element.SendKeys(String text);
Example:element.SendKeys("abc");

Program: Login to Facebook account with email as"abc@mail.com" and password as "junk"

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI;
using System;
namespace hello_world
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)

           {
            //open facebook page

IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.facebook.com/");

//Find email field and send abc@mail.com
IWebElement email = driver.FindElement(By.Id("email"));

              email.SendKeys("abc@mail.com");

//Find password field and send junk
IWebElement pass = driver.FindElement(By.Id("pass"));
pass.SendKeys("junk");

//Click on Login button
IWebElement submit_btn = driver.FindElement(By.Id("u_0_l"));
submit_btn.Click();
}
}
}

In our next tutorial let us learn about Implicit and Explicit wait methods in selenium!

Read data from Excel sheet for WebDriver

Read data from excel sheet to use it in webDriver

During testing we often need to execute the same Test cases with different Test Data.
The Test Data can be obtained from various sources such as text file,excel file and so on.
In this tutorial we will learn to extract(read) data from an excel sheet and use it in our webdriver.

Example:Let us login to facebook account by reading Email and Password present in the excel sheet.

Step 1:Go to "c:\temp" folder and create a new Microsoft excel worksheet with name as "demo.xlsx"

Step 2 :Open "demo.xlsx" spreadsheet and enter Email and password as shown below

Step 3:Open Visual Studio and click on Tools>NuGet Package Manger>Manage Nuget Packages for solution...

Step 4:In the search bar search "Excel" and download and install Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel into the current solution.

Step 5: In the namespace section add

using excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel;

Step 6: Add the below code snippet

//Creates a new instance of Excel
Excel.Application xlApp = new Excel.Application();
//Opens demo.xlsx
Excel.Workbook xlWorkbook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(@"C:\Temp\demo.xlsx");
//Selects the first Sheet
Excel._Worksheet xlWorksheet = xlWorkbook.Sheets[1];
//Finds the range of cells used in the sheet
Excel.Range xlRange = xlWorksheet.UsedRange;

Step 7: To get the data in a specified cell use xlRange.Cells[i, j].value2;
where i and j being row and column index.

Step 8: Store the value obtained from cell as a string

String email, pass;


                 //get userid in first cell

                email = xlRange.Cells[1, 1].value2;

                 //get password in present cell

                pass= xlRange.Cells[1, 2].value2;

Step 9: Use the obtained data in Selenium WebDriver.

Complete program:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

using System.Drawing;
using OpenQA.Selenium; // This is Selenium namespace
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;//Use this namespace when you are automating in google chrome
using System.Threading;

using OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI;
using Excel=Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel;

namespace First_Program
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)

       {

            // Create a new excel application instance

Excel.Application xlApp = new Excel.Application();
//Open demo sheet

Excel.Workbook xlWorkbook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(@"C:\temp\demo.xlsx");
//select the first sheet in demo.xlsx
Excel._Worksheet xlWorksheet = xlWorkbook.Sheets[1];

//Find the range of cells used
Excel.Range xlRange = xlWorksheet.UsedRange;

string email, pass;

         //get userid in first cell
                email = xlRange.Cells[1, 1].value2;

          //get password in present cell
                pass= xlRange.Cells[1, 2].value2;

IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.facebook.com");
driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitlyWait(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10000));

driver.FindElement(By.Id("email")).SendKeys(email);
driver.FindElement(By.Id("pass")).SendKeys(pass);
driver.FindElement(By.Name("u_0_l")).Click();
Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
}

}

Implicit and Explicit Wait in Selenium

Implicit and Explicit wait in Selenium

We often get openQA.Selenium.NoSuchElementException when we are trying to perform an action on html elements before they are even loaded.
To avoid this exception selenium provides two type of wait methods:-
1.Implicit Wait
2.Explicit wait

Implicit wait
An implicit wait is used to tell the WebDriver to wait for a certain amount of time when trying to find an element or elements if they are not available.
The default setting is 0. Once set, the implicit wait is set for the life of the WebDriver object instance.

Example:To wait for implicitly for 5 seconds before we click on "Sign in" button in "www.google.com"

IWebDriver chrome = new ChromeDriver(); //Opens chrome browser                     
chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://google.com");//Opens www.google.com


//waits for 5 seconds until "Sign in" button is available

chrome.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitlyWait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));

 //Finds "Sign in" button
 IWebElement sign_btn = chrome.FindElement(By.Id("gb_70"));

//Clicks on "Sign in" Button

 sign_btn.Click();

Explicit wait
An explicit wait is code you define to wait for a certain condition to occur before proceeding further in the code.
The worst case of this is thread.sleep(), which sets the condition to an exact time period to wait.

Syntax:Thread.sleep(int milli_sec);

In our Next tutorial let us learn about select class in Selenium

Finding Xpath using FireBug and FirePath

Find Xpath using FireBug and FirePath

To find Xpath let us follow the below steps:

Step 1: Open Mozilla FireFox Browser
Step 2: Download and Install FIREBUG and restart the browser
Step 3:Download and Install FIREPATH and restart the browser
Step 4:Now click on firebug icon in the command tool bar as shown in the below figure

Step 5:In the firebug pop up screen click on "firepath" as shown in the below figure

Step 6:To find Xpath click on the cursor icon and place it on the desired element in the page.

Step 7: Finally use the XPATH obtained in your code.

In our next tutorial let us learn about WebElements in detail!

Select Class in Selenium

Selenium supports “Select” class, which provides useful methods for interacting with select options. User can perform operations on a select drop-down and also de-select operation using the below methods.

Note: Add using OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI; in namespace Section

SelectByIndex
Syntax: select.selectByIndex(Index);
Purpose: To Select the option based on the index given by the user.
There is an attribute called "values" which will have the index values.

SelectByValue
Syntax: select.selectByValue(Value);
Purpose: To Select the options that have a value matching with the given argument by the user.

SelectByText
Syntax: select.selectByText(Text);
Purpose: To Select all options that display text matching the given argument.
It will not look for any index or value, it will try to match the VisibleText (which will display in dropdown)

deselectByIndex
Syntax: select.deselectByIndex(Index);
Purpose: To Deselect the option at the given index. The user has to provide the value of index.

deselectByValue
Syntax: select.deselectByValue(Value);
Purpose: To Deselect all options that have a value matching the given argument.

deselectByVisibleText
Syntax: select.deselectByVisibleText(Text);
Purpose: To Deselect all options that display text matching the given argument.

deselectAll
Syntax: select.deselectAll();
Purpose: To Clear all selected entries.
This works only when the SELECT supports multiple selections.
It throws NotImplemented eError if the "SELECT" does not support multiple selections. In select it mandatory to have an attribute multiple="multiple"

Example:To select (day,month,year) in birthday field in "WWW.FACEBOOK.COM"



             IWebDriver chrome = new ChromeDriver();     //Open chrome browser
            chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://facebook.com");  //open facebook website

//wait until elements are available
chrome.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitlyWait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));

//To select date AND SELECTBYVALUE
var day = chrome.FindElement(By.Id("day"));
var select_day = new SelectElement(day);
select_day.SelectByValue("2");

//To select month by SELECTBYTEXT
var month = chrome.FindElement(By.Id("month"));
var select_month = new SelectElement(month);
select_month.SelectByText("Oct");

//To select year by SELECTBYINDEX
var year = chrome.FindElement(By.Id("year"));
var select_year = new SelectElement(year);
select_year.SelectByIndex(5);

In our next tutorial let us learn about cookies!

Cookies in Selenium

An HTTP cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in the user's web browser while the user is browsing.
Cookies were designed to record the user's browsing activity.

The following Cookie methods are widely used in selenium:

Add Cookie
Method Name: addCookie(Cookie cookie)
Syntax: driver.Manage().Cookies.addCookie(arg0);
Purpose: To add a specific cookie into cookies. If the cookie's domain name is left blank, it is assumed that the cookie is meant for the domain of the current document.
Parameters: cookie - The name of the cookie to add.

Delete Cookie
Method Name: deleteCookie(Cookie cookie)
Syntax: driver.manage()Cookies.deleteCookie(arg0);
Purpose: Delete a cookie from the browser's "cookie jar". The domain of the cookie will be ignored.
Parameter: Cookie

Delete Cookie with Name
Method Name: deleteCookieNamed(java.lang.String name)
Syntax: driver.manage().Cookies.deleteCookieNamed(arg0);
Purpose: Delete the named cookie from the current domain. This is equivalent to setting the named cookie's expiry date to sometime in the past.
Parameters: name - The name of the cookie to delete

Delete All Cookies
Method Name: deleteAllCookies()
Syntax: driver.manage().Cookies.deleteAllCookies();
Purpose: It will delete all the cookies for the current domain.
Parameters: N/A

Get Cookies
Method Name: getCookies()
Syntax: driver.manage().Cookies.getCookies();
Purpose: Get all the cookies for the current domain..
Returns: A Set of cookies for the current domain.

Get the Cookie with Specific Name
Method Name: getCookieNamed(java.lang.String name)
Syntax: driver.manage().Cookies.getCookieNamed(arg0);
Purpose: To Get a cookie with a given name.
Parameters: name - the name of the cookie
Returns: It will return the cookie value for the name specified, or null if no cookie found with the given name

In our Next Tutorial let us learn to capture screenshot in selenium!

Capture Screenshot In Selenium

Capture Screenshot in Selenium

During our day to day testing we often need to capture screenshots for reporting purposes. Selenium provides an interface named as ITakesScreenshot which takes screenshot of the webDriver.

Syntax: ((ITakesScreenshot)driver).GetScreenshot();

Program: To capture screenshot of www.facebook.com and save the image as "FB.PNG" in "c:\Temp folder".

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

using OpenQA.Selenium;

using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

using System.Drawing.Imaging; //Used to save image

namespace hello_world

{
  class Program
   {
     static void Main(string[] args)
      {

        //Creates an instance of chrome browser
        IWebDriver chrome = new ChromeDriver();

        //Opens facebook webpage
        chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.facebook.com");

        //Takes screenshot
        Screenshot ss = ((ITakesScreenshot)chrome).GetScreenshot();

        //saves in c:\Temp as FB.PNG
        ss.SaveAsFile(@"C:\TEMP\FB.PNG", ImageFormat.Png);
      }
      }
}

Result

FB.PNG Image stored in c:\Temp

The captured image can also be stored in different format such as JPEG,BMP,GIF and so on.
Example:To store as FB.JPEG all you need to do is change the extension of file to "FB.JPEG" and use ImageFormat.jpeg
ss.SaveAsFile(@"C:\TEMP\FB.JPEG", ImageFormat.Jpeg));

In our next tutorial let us learn to read data from EXCEL sheet and use it selenium webdriver!

Browser Navigation in Selenium

Browser Navigation in selenium

Let us look at the most important navigation commands which are frequently used while testing:

Navigate GoToUrl Command

GoToUrl(String arg0) : void – This method Loads a new web page in the current browser window. It accepts a String parameter and returns nothing.
Command – driver.navigate().to(webpageurl);
Example – driver.navigate().to("http://www.google.com");

Forward Command

forward() : void – This method does the same operation as clicking on the Forward Button of any browser. It neither accepts nor returns anything
Command – driver.navigate().forward();
Example – driver.navigate().forward();

Back Command

back() : void – This method does the same operation as clicking on the Back Button of any browser. It neither accepts nor returns anything.
Command – driver.navigate().back();
Example – driver.navigate().back();

Refresh Command

refresh() : void – This method Refresh the current page. It neither accepts nor returns anything.
Command – driver.navigate().refresh();
Example –driver.navigate().refresh();

Example:


using OpenQA.Selenium;

using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

namespace hello_world

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {
                   //Creates a new instance of chrome browser
   IWebDriver chrome = new ChromeDriver();
                   //Navigates to google.com
   chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.google.com");
                   //Navigates to facebook.com
   chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://facebook.com");
                   //Refreshs facebook.com
  chrome.Navigate().Refresh();
                   //Goes back to google.com
  chrome.Navigate().Back();
                  //goes forth to facebook
  chrome.Navigate().Forward();

        }

    }

}

In the next tutorial let us learn to Inspect web elements!

First Automation Program

Let us kick start automating our first program.

Program: To open www.google.com in chrome browser.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

using OpenQA.Selenium;

using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

 namespace First_Program

     {

            class Program

                {

                     static void Main(string[] args)
                       {
                          //Creates an instance of chrome browser
                          IWebDriver chrome = new ChromeDriver();

//Opens www.google.com in chrome browser
chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.google.com");

Now let us analyse the above program:

Importing Packages in Namespace Section

OpenQA.Selenium - Contains the WebDriver class needed to instantiate a new browser loaded with a specific driver
OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome - Contains the chromeDriver class needed to instantiate a chrome-specific driver onto the browser instantiated by the WebDriver class.
The following namespace are specific to browser:

using OpenQA.Selenium.Edge; //Used for Edge browser
using OpenQA.Selenium.IE; //Used for IE Browser
using OpenQA.Selenium.firefox; //Used for firefox browser
using OpenQA.Selenium.Opera; // Used for Opera browser

Main Program:

Iwebdriver is an interface through which user controls the browser.
IWebDriver chrome = new ChromeDriver();
//The above statement creates a new instance of google chrome browser. Syntax to create a new instance of various browser:-

IWebDriver IE = new InternetExplorerDriver();//For IE Explorer
IWebDriver fox = new FirefoxDriver();//For Morzilla firefox
IWebDriver edge = new EdgeDriver();//For Edge browser

chrome.Navigate().GoToUrl("Https://www.google.co.in");
The navigate method instructs the browser to navigate to another location.
GoToUrl(string) method loads a webpage in the current browser window.

We finally finished Automating our first program.

In the next Tutorial let us learn more about navigation command!

Setup Selenium in Visual Studio

Steps to configure Selenium webDriver in Visual Studio:

Step 1: Download and Install Visual Studio into your system
Step 2: Create a new folder named as "Selenium" in "c:\" drive
Step 3: Download and extract chrome driver exe and IEDriverServer exe
Step 4: Copy these .exe files to newly created Selenium folder (c:\Selenium)
Step 5: Open control panel and search "Path" in search bar.
Step 6: Now click on "Edit the system variables" as shown below

Step 7: In system Properties pop up window click on "Environment variables..." under advanced tab.

Step 8: Select path and click on edit as shown below

Step 9: In "Edit environment Variable" window click on "New" and add "C:\Selenium" and finally click on "OK"

Step 10: Open Visual Studio and click on New Project
Step 11: Select Console Application and enter Name of your choice(In our example its "hello world") and click on "OK"

Step 12: In Visual Studio navigate to Tools>NuGet Package Manager>Manage NuGet Packages for solution and click on it.

Step 13:Search Selenium in the search bar and later install and add the following packages to the current solution:-

Selenium.WebDriver
Selenium.Suppport
Selenium.WebDriver.ChromeDriver
Selenium.WebDriver.IEDriver

Finally we have finished setting up selenium in Visual Studio!!!

In our next tutorial let us automate our first program !

Introduction to Selenium

"Selenium Automates Browser"

Selenium is an open source tool which is used for automating web applications.
It is primarily used by software testers for testing various Websites and it was developed by Jason Huggins an engineer at Thought Works in 2004.

The Key Features Of Selenium are:

It supports a vast number of browsers
It works on vast number of operating Systems
It supports mobile devices
Can execute multiple test cases in parallel
Open source tool
It supports multiple languages

Tool Suites of Selenium

Depending on the testing needs selenium is categorized into four components:

Selenium IDE

Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment for Selenium tests.
Selenium IDE is a fire fox add-on that records clicks , typing and other actions to make test cases which tester can playback in the fire fox browser and export to Selenium RC.
Selenium IDE has the following features: record/ playback feature, debugging with step by step and break points.
Selenium IDE allows you to save tests as HTML, Java, Ruby scripts, or any other format. Allows you to add selenese commands as and when required.4

Selenium RC

A solution to cross browser testing.
A server, written in Java and so available on all the platforms.
Acts as a proxy for web requests from them.
Client libraries for many popular languages.
Bundles Selenium Core and automatically loads into the browser.
Selenium RC is used to enhance your script.

Selenium Grid

Selenium-Grid allows the Selenium-RC solution to scale for test suites or test suites to be run in multiple environments.
With Selenium-Grid multiple instances of Selenium-RC are running on various operating system and browser configurations, each of these when launching register with a hub. When tests are sent to the hub they are then redirected to an available Selenium-RC, which will launch the browser and run the test.
This allows for running tests in parallel, with the entire test suite theoretically taking only as long to run as the longest individual test.

Selenium Webdriver

WebDriver is designed in a simpler and more concise programming interface along with addressing some limitations in the Selenium-RC API.
WebDriver is a compact Object Oriented API when compared to Selenium1.0.
It drives the browser much more effectively and overcomes the limitations of Selenium 1.x which affected our functional test coverage, like the file upload or download, pop-ups and dialogs barrier

C# is a powerful and elegant language to learn and in this tutorial we continue to use Selenium in C# .

In our next tutorial let us learn to setup selenium in Visual studio IDE!

Automation Tutorial