Selenium Commands Selenese

Selenium commands, often called selenese, are the set of commands that run your tests. A sequence of these
commands is a test script. Here we explain those commands in detail, and we present the many choices you
have in testing your web application when using Selenium.

Selenium provides a rich set of commands for fully testing your web-app in virtually any way you can
imagine. The command set is often called selenese. These commands essentially create a testing language.

In selenese, one can test the existence of UI elements based on their HTML tags, test for specific content, test
for broken links, input fields, selection list options, submitting forms, and table data among other things. In
addition Selenium commands support testing of window size, mouse position, alerts, Ajax functionality, pop
up windows, event handling, and many other web-application features. The Command Reference lists all the
available commands.

A command tells Selenium what to do. Selenium commands come in three flavors: Actions, Accessors,
and Assertions.

Actions are commands that generally manipulate the state of the application. They do things like
click this link and select that option. If an Action fails, or has an error, the execution of the
current test is stopped.

Many Actions can be called with the AndWait suffix, e.g. clickAndWait. This suffix tells
Selenium that the action will cause the browser to make a call to the server, and that Selenium should
wait for a new page to load.

Accessors examine the state of the application and store the results in variables, e.g. storeTitle.
They are also used to automatically generate Assertions.

Assertions are like Accessors, but they verify that the state of the application conforms to what is
expected. Examples include make sure the page title is X and verify that this checkbox is
checked.

All Selenium Assertions can be used in 3 modes: assert, verify, and waitFor. For example,
you can assertText, verifyText and waitForText. When an assert fails, the test is aborted.
When a verify fails, the test will continue execution, logging the failure. This allows a single
assert to ensure that the application is on the correct page, followed by a bunch of verify
assertions to test form field values, labels, etc.

waitFor commands wait for some condition to become true (which can be useful for testing Ajax
applications). They will succeed immediately if the condition is already true. However, they will fail
and halt the test if the condition does not become true within the current timeout setting (see the
setTimeout action below).

Script Syntax
Selenium commands are simple, they consist of the command and two parameters. For example:

verifyText //div//a Login

[2]
The parameters are not always required; it depends on the command. In some cases both are required, in
others one parameter is required, and in still others the command may take no parameters at all. Here are a
couple more examples:

goBackAndWait
verifyTextPresent Welcome to My Home
Page
type id=phone (555) 666-7066
type id=addres ${myVariableAddress}
s1
The command reference describes the parameter requirements for each command.

Parameters vary, however they are typically:

a locator for identifying a UI element within a page.

a text pattern for verifying or asserting expected page content
a text pattern or a selenium variable for entering text in an input field or for selecting an option from
an option list.

Locators, text patterns, selenium variables, and the commands themselves are described in considerable
detail in the section on Selenium Commands.

Selenium scripts that will be run from Selenium-IDE will be stored in an HTML text file format. This
consists of an HTML table with three columns. The first column identifies the Selenium command, the
second is a target, and the final column contains a value. The second and third columns may not require
values depending on the chosen Selenium command, but they should be present. Each table row represents a
new Selenium command. Here is an example of a test that opens a page, asserts the page title and then
verifies some content on the page:

<table>
<tr><td>open</td><td>/download/</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>assertTitle</td><td></td><td>Downloads</td></tr>
<tr><td>verifyText</td><td>//h2</td><td>Downloads</td></tr>
</table>

Rendered as a table in a browser this would look like the following:

open /download/
assertTitle Downloads
verifyText //h2 Downloads
The Selenese HTML syntax can be used to write and run tests without requiring knowledge of a
programming language. With a basic knowledge of selenese and Selenium-IDE you can quickly produce and
run testcases.

Test Suites
A test suite is a collection of tests. Often one will run all the tests in a test suite as one continuous batch-job.

When using Selenium-IDE, test suites also can be defined using a simple HTML file. The syntax again is
simple. An HTML table defines a list of tests where each row defines the filesystem path to each test. An
example tells it all.

<html>
<head>
<title>Test Suite Function Tests - Priority 1</title>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tr><td><b>Suite Of Tests</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="./Login.html">Login</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="./SearchValues.html">Test Searching for Values</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="./SaveValues.html">Test Save</a></td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

A file similar to this would allow running the tests all at once, one after another, from the Selenium-IDE.

Test suites can also be maintained when using Selenium-RC. This is done via programming and can be done
a number of ways. Commonly Junit is used to maintain a test suite if one is using Selenium-RC with Java.
Additionally, if C# is the chosen language, Nunit could be employed. If using an interpreted language like
Python with Selenium-RC then some simple programming would be involved in setting up a test suite. Since
the whole reason for using Selenium-RC is to make use of programming logic for your testing this usually
isnt a problem.

Commonly Used Selenium Commands

To conclude our introduction of Selenium, well show you a few typical Selenium commands. These are
probably the most commonly used commands for building tests.

open
opens a page using a URL.
click/clickAndWait
performs a click operation, and optionally waits for a new page to load.
verifyTitle/assertTitle
verifies an expected page title.
verifyTextPresent
verifies expected text is somewhere on the page.
verifyElementPresent
verifies an expected UI element, as defined by its HTML tag, is present on the page.
verifyText
verifies expected text and its corresponding HTML tag are present on the page.
verifyTable
verifies a tables expected contents.
waitForPageToLoad
pauses execution until an expected new page loads. Called automatically when clickAndWait is used.
waitForElementPresent
pauses execution until an expected UI element, as defined by its HTML tag, is present on the page.

Verifying Page Elements

Verifying UI elements on a web page is probably the most common feature of your automated tests. Selenese
allows multiple ways of checking for UI elements. It is important that you understand these different
methods because these methods define what you are actually testing.

For example, will you test that...

1. an element is present somewhere on the page?

2. specific text is somewhere on the page?
3. specific text is at a specific location on the page?
For example, if you are testing a text heading, the text and its position at the top of the page are probably
relevant for your test. If, however, you are testing for the existence of an image on the home page, and the
web designers frequently change the specific image file along with its position on the page, then you only
want to test that an image (as opposed to the specific image file) exists somewhere on the page.

Assertion or Verification?
Choosing between assert and verify comes down to convenience and management of failures. Theres
very little point checking that the first paragraph on the page is the correct one if your test has already failed
when checking that the browser is displaying the expected page. If youre not on the correct page, youll
probably want to abort your test case so that you can investigate the cause and fix the issue(s) promptly. On
the other hand, you may want to check many attributes of a page without aborting the test case on the first
failure as this will allow you to review all failures on the page and take the appropriate action. Effectively an
assert will fail the test and abort the current test case, whereas a verify will fail the test and continue to
run the test case.

The best use of this feature is to logically group your test commands, and start each group with an assert
followed by one or more verify test commands. An example follows:

Command Target Value

open /download/
assertTitle Downloads
verifyText //h2 Downloads
assertTable 1.2.1 Selenium
IDE
verifyTable 1.2.2 June 3, 2008
verifyTable 1.2.3 1.0 beta 2
The above example first opens a page and then asserts that the correct page is loaded by comparing the
title with the expected value. Only if this passes will the following command run and verify that the text is
present in the expected location. The test case then asserts the first column in the second row of the first
table contains the expected value, and only if this passed will the remaining cells in that row be verified.

verifyTextPresent
The command verifyTextPresent is used to verify specific text exists somewhere on the page. It takes a single
argumentthe text pattern to be verified. For example:

Command Target Value

verifyTextPresent Marketing
Analysis
This would cause Selenium to search for, and verify, that the text string Marketing Analysis appears
somewhere on the page currently being tested. Use verifyTextPresent when you are interested in only the text
itself being present on the page. Do not use this when you also need to test where the text occurs on the page.

verifyElementPresent
Use this command when you must test for the presence of a specific UI element, rather than its content. This
verification does not check the text, only the HTML tag. One common use is to check for the presence of an
image.

Command Target Value

verifyElementPresent //div/p/i
Command Target Value
mg
This command verifies that an image, specified by the existence of an <img> HTML tag, is present on the
page, and that it follows a <div> tag and a <p> tag. The first (and only) parameter is a locator for telling the
Selenese command how to find the element. Locators are explained in the next section.

verifyElementPresent can be used to check the existence of any HTML tag within the page. You can check
the existence of links, paragraphs, divisions <div>, etc. Here are a few more examples.

Command Target Value

verifyElementPresent //div/p
verifyElementPresent //div/a
verifyElementPresent id=Login
verifyElementPresent link=Go to
Marketing
Research
verifyElementPresent //a[2]
verifyElementPresent //head/title
These examples illustrate the variety of ways a UI element may be tested. Again, locators are explained in
the next section.

verifyText
Use verifyText when both the text and its UI element must be tested. verifyText must use a locator. If you
choose an XPath or DOM locator, you can verify that specific text appears at a specific location on the page
relative to other UI components on the page.

Command Target Value

verifyText //table/t This is my
r/td/div/ text and it
p occurs right
after the div
inside the
table.

Locating Elements
For many Selenium commands, a target is required. This target identifies an element in the content of the
web application, and consists of the location strategy followed by the location in the format
locatorType=location. The locator type can be omitted in many cases. The various locator types are explained
below with examples for each.

Locating by Identifier
This is probably the most common method of locating elements and is the catch-all default when no
recognized locator type is used. With this strategy, the first element with the id attribute value matching the
location will be used. If no element has a matching id attribute, then the first element with a name attribute
matching the location will be used.

For instance, your page source could have id and name attributes as follows:

1 <html>
2 <body>
3 <form id="loginForm">
4 <input name="username" type="text" />
5 <input name="password" type="password" />
6 <input name="continue" type="submit" value="Login" />
7 </form>
8 </body>
9 <html>

The following locator strategies would return the elements from the HTML snippet above indicated by line
number:

identifier=loginForm (3)
identifier=password (5)
identifier=continue (6)
continue (6)

Since the identifier type of locator is the default, the identifier= in the first three examples above is not
necessary.

Locating by Id
This type of locator is more limited than the identifier locator type, but also more explicit. Use this when you
know an elements id attribute.

1 <html>
2 <body>
3 <form id="loginForm">
4 <input name="username" type="text" />
5 <input name="password" type="password" />
6 <input name="continue" type="submit" value="Login" />
7 <input name="continue" type="button" value="Clear" />
8 </form>
9 </body>
10 <html>

id=loginForm (3)

Locating by Name
The name locator type will locate the first element with a matching name attribute. If multiple elements have
the same value for a name attribute, then you can use filters to further refine your location strategy. The
default filter type is value (matching the value attribute).

1 <html>
2 <body>
3 <form id="loginForm">
4 <input name="username" type="text" />
5 <input name="password" type="password" />
6 <input name="continue" type="submit" value="Login" />
7 <input name="continue" type="button" value="Clear" />
8 </form>
9 </body>
10 <html>

name=username (4)
name=continue value=Clear (7)
 name=continue Clear (7)
name=continue type=button (7)

Note

Unlike some types of XPath and DOM locators, the three types of locators above allow Selenium to test a UI
element independent of its location on the page. So if the page structure and organization is altered, the test
will still pass. You may or may not want to also test whether the page structure changes. In the case where
web designers frequently alter the page, but its functionality must be regression tested, testing via id and
name attributes, or really via any HTML property, becomes very important.

Locating by XPath
XPath is the language used for locating nodes in an XML document. As HTML can be an implementation of
XML (XHTML), Selenium users can leverage this powerful language to target elements in their web
applications. XPath extends beyond (as well as supporting) the simple methods of locating by id or name
attributes, and opens up all sorts of new possibilities such as locating the third checkbox on the page.

One of the main reasons for using XPath is when you dont have a suitable id or name attribute for the
element you wish to locate. You can use XPath to either locate the element in absolute terms (not advised), or
relative to an element that does have an id or name attribute. XPath locators can also be used to specify
elements via attributes other than id and name.

Absolute XPaths contain the location of all elements from the root (html) and as a result are likely to fail
with only the slightest adjustment to the application. By finding a nearby element with an id or name
attribute (ideally a parent element) you can locate your target element based on the relationship. This is much
less likely to change and can make your tests more robust.

Since only xpath locators start with //, it is not necessary to include the xpath= label when specifying an
XPath locator.

1 <html>
2 <body>
3 <form id="loginForm">
4 <input name="username" type="text" />
5 <input name="password" type="password" />
6 <input name="continue" type="submit" value="Login" />
7 <input name="continue" type="button" value="Clear" />
8 </form>
9 </body>
10 <html>

xpath=/html/body/form[1] (3) - Absolute path (would break if the HTML was changed only slightly)
//form[1] (3) - First form element in the HTML
xpath=//form[@id='loginForm'] (3) - The form element with attribute named id and the value
loginForm
xpath=//form[input/@name='username'] (3) - First form element with an input child element with
attribute named name and the value username
//input[@name='username'] (4) - First input element with attribute named name and the value
username
//form[@id='loginForm']/input[1] (4) - First input child element of the form element with attribute
named id and the value loginForm
 //input[@name='continue'][@type='button'] (7) - Input with attribute named name and the value
continue and attribute named type and the value button
//form[@id='loginForm']/input[4] (7) - Fourth input child element of the form element with attribute
named id and value loginForm

These examples cover some basics, but in order to learn more, the following references are recommended:

W3Schools XPath Tutorial

W3C XPath Recommendation

There are also a couple of very useful Firefox Add-ons that can assist in discovering the XPath of an
element:

XPath Checker - suggests XPath and can be used to test XPath results.
Firebug - XPath suggestions are just one of the many powerful features of this very useful add-on.

Locating Hyperlinks by Link Text

This is a simple method of locating a hyperlink in your web page by using the text of the link. If two links
with the same text are present, then the first match will be used.

1 <html>
2 <body>
3 <p>Are you sure you want to do this?</p>
4 <a href="continue.html">Continue</a>
5 <a href="cancel.html">Cancel</a>
6 </body>
7 <html>

link=Continue (4)
link=Cancel (5)

Locating by DOM
The Document Object Model represents an HTML document and can be accessed using JavaScript. This
location strategy takes JavaScript that evaluates to an element on the page, which can be simply the
elements location using the hierarchical dotted notation.

Since only dom locators start with document, it is not necessary to include the dom= label when specifying
a DOM locator.

1 <html>
2 <body>
3 <form id="loginForm">
4 <input name="username" type="text" />
5 <input name="password" type="password" />
6 <input name="continue" type="submit" value="Login" />
7 <input name="continue" type="button" value="Clear" />
8 </form>
9 </body>
10 <html>

dom=document.getElementById('loginForm') (3)
dom=document.forms['loginForm'] (3)
 dom=document.forms[0] (3)
document.forms[0].username (4)
document.forms[0].elements['username'] (4)
document.forms[0].elements[0] (4)
document.forms[0].elements[3] (7)

You can use Selenium itself as well as other sites and extensions to explore the DOM of your web
application. A good reference exists on W3Schools.

Locating by CSS
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language for describing the rendering of HTML and XML documents.
CSS uses Selectors for binding style properties to elements in the document. These Selectors can be used by
Selenium as another locating strategy.

1 <html>
2 <body>
3 <form id="loginForm">
4 <input class="required" name="username" type="text" />
5 <input class="required passfield" name="password" type="password" />
6 <input name="continue" type="submit" value="Login" />
7 <input name="continue" type="button" value="Clear" />
8 </form>
9 </body>
10 <html>

css=form#loginForm (3)
css=input[name="username"] (4)
css=input.required[type="text"] (4)
css=input.passfield (5)
css=#loginForm input[type="button"] (7)
css=#loginForm input:nth-child(2) (5)

For more information about CSS Selectors, the best place to go is the W3C publication. Youll find
additional references there.

Note

Most experienced Selenium users recommend CSS as their locating strategy of choice as its considerably
faster than XPath and can find the most complicated objects in an intrinsic HTML document.

Implicit Locators
You can choose to omit the locator type in the following situations:

Locators without an explicitly defined locator strategy will default to using the identifier
locator strategy. See Locating by Identifier.
Locators starting with // will use the XPath locator strategy. See Locating by XPath.
Locators starting with document will use the DOM locator strategy. See Locating by
DOM
Matching Text Patterns
Like locators, patterns are a type of parameter frequently required by Selenese commands. Examples of
commands which require patterns are verifyTextPresent, verifyTitle, verifyAlert, assertConfirmation,
verifyText, and verifyPrompt. And as has been mentioned above, link locators can utilize a pattern. Patterns
allow you to describe, via the use of special characters, what text is expected rather than having to specify
that text exactly.

There are three types of patterns: globbing, regular expressions, and exact.

Globbing Patterns
Most people are familiar with globbing as it is utilized in filename expansion at a DOS or Unix/Linux
command line such as ls *.c. In this case, globbing is used to display all the files ending with a .c extension
that exist in the current directory. Globbing is fairly limited. Only two special characters are supported in the
Selenium implementation:

* which translates to match anything, i.e., nothing, a single character, or many characters.

[ ] (character class) which translates to match any single character found inside the square
brackets. A dash (hyphen) can be used as a shorthand to specify a range of characters (which
are contiguous in the ASCII character set). A few examples will make the functionality of a
character class clear:

[aeiou] matches any lowercase vowel

[0-9] matches any digit

[a-zA-Z0-9] matches any alphanumeric character

In most other contexts, globbing includes a third special character, the ?. However, Selenium globbing
patterns only support the asterisk and character class.

To specify a globbing pattern parameter for a Selenese command, you can prefix the pattern with a glob:
label. However, because globbing patterns are the default, you can also omit the label and specify just the
pattern itself.

Below is an example of two commands that use globbing patterns. The actual link text on the page being
tested was Film/Television Department; by using a pattern rather than the exact text, the click command
will work even if the link text is changed to Film & Television Department or Film and Television
Department. The glob patterns asterisk will match anything or nothing between the word Film and the
word Television.

Command Target Value

click link=glob:Fil
m*Televisio
n
Department
verifyTitle glob:*Film*
Television*
The actual title of the page reached by clicking on the link was De Anza Film And Television Department -
Menu. By using a pattern rather than the exact text, the verifyTitle will pass as long as the two words
Film and Television appear (in that order) anywhere in the pages title. For example, if the pages owner
should shorten the title to just Film & Television Department, the test would still pass. Using a pattern for
both a link and a simple test that the link worked (such as the verifyTitle above does) can greatly reduce the
maintenance for such test cases.

Regular Expression Patterns

Regular expression patterns are the most powerful of the three types of patterns that Selenese supports.
Regular expressions are also supported by most high-level programming languages, many text editors, and a
host of tools, including the Linux/Unix command-line utilities grep, sed, and awk. In Selenese, regular
expression patterns allow a user to perform many tasks that would be very difficult otherwise. For example,
suppose your test needed to ensure that a particular table cell contained nothing but a number. regexp: [0-9]+
is a simple pattern that will match a decimal number of any length.

Whereas Selenese globbing patterns support only the * and [ ] (character class) features, Selenese regular
expression patterns offer the same wide array of special characters that exist in JavaScript. Below are a
subset of those special characters:

PATTERN MATCH
. any single
character
[] character
class: any
single
character that
appears inside
the brackets
* quantifier: 0 or
more of the
preceding
character (or
group)
+ quantifier: 1 or
more of the
preceding
character (or
group)
? quantifier: 0 or
1 of the
preceding
character (or
group)
{1,5} quantifier: 1
through 5 of
the preceding
character (or
group)
| alternation: the
character/grou
p on the left or
the
character/grou
p on the right
() grouping:
often used
with
PATTERN MATCH
alternation
and/or
quantifier
Regular expression patterns in Selenese need to be prefixed with either regexp: or regexpi:. The former is
case-sensitive; the latter is case-insensitive.

A few examples will help clarify how regular expression patterns can be used with Selenese commands. The
first one uses what is probably the most commonly used regular expression pattern.* (dot star). This two-
character sequence can be translated as 0 or more occurrences of any character or more simply, anything
or nothing. It is the equivalent of the one-character globbing pattern * (a single asterisk).

Command Target Value

click link=regexp:
Film.*Televi
sion
Department
verifyTitle regexp:.*Fil
m.*Televisio
n.*
The example above is functionally equivalent to the earlier example that used globbing patterns for this same
test. The only differences are the prefix (regexp: instead of glob:) and the anything or nothing pattern (.*
instead of just *).

The more complex example below tests that the Yahoo! Weather page for Anchorage, Alaska contains info
on the sunrise time:

Command Target Value

open http://weather.yahoo.co
m/forecast/USAK0012.
html
verifyTextPresent regexp:Sunrise: *[0-9]
{1,2}:[0-9]{2} [ap]m
Lets examine the regular expression above one part at a time:

Sunrise: * The string

Sunrise:
followed by 0
or more
spaces
[0-9]{1,2} 1 or 2 digits
(for the hour
of the day)
: The character
: (no special
characters
involved)
[0-9]{2} 2 digits (for
the minutes)
followed by a
space
[ap]m a or p
followed by
m (am or
 pm)
Exact Patterns
The exact type of Selenium pattern is of marginal usefulness. It uses no special characters at all. So, if you
needed to look for an actual asterisk character (which is special for both globbing and regular expression
patterns), the exact pattern would be one way to do that. For example, if you wanted to select an item labeled
Real * from a dropdown, the following code might work or it might not. The asterisk in the glob:Real *
pattern will match anything or nothing. So, if there was an earlier select option labeled Real Numbers, it
would be the option selected rather than the Real * option.

select //select glob:

Real *
In order to ensure that the Real * item would be selected, the exact: prefix could be used to create an exact
pattern as shown below:

select //select exact:

Real *
But the same effect could be achieved via escaping the asterisk in a regular expression pattern:

select //select regexp:R

eal \*
Its rather unlikely that most testers will ever need to look for an asterisk or a set of square brackets with
characters inside them (the character class for globbing patterns). Thus, globbing patterns and regular
expression patterns are sufficient for the vast majority of us.

The AndWait Commands

The difference between a command and its AndWait alternative is that the regular command (e.g. click) will
do the action and continue with the following command as fast as it can, while the AndWait alternative (e.g.
clickAndWait) tells Selenium to wait for the page to load after the action has been done.

The AndWait alternative is always used when the action causes the browser to navigate to another page or
reload the present one.

Be aware, if you use an AndWait command for an action that does not trigger a navigation/refresh, your test
will fail. This happens because Selenium will reach the AndWaits timeout without seeing any navigation or
refresh being made, causing Selenium to raise a timeout exception.

The waitFor Commands in AJAX applications

In AJAX driven web applications, data is retrieved from server without refreshing the page. Using andWait
commands will not work as the page is not actually refreshed. Pausing the test execution for a certain period
of time is also not a good approach as web element might appear later or earlier than the stipulated period
depending on the systems responsiveness, load or other uncontrolled factors of the moment, leading to test
failures. The best approach would be to wait for the needed element in a dynamic period and then continue
the execution as soon as the element is found.

This is done using waitFor commands, as waitForElementPresent or waitForVisible, which wait

dynamically, checking for the desired condition every second and continuing to the next command in the
script as soon as the condition is met.

Sequence of Evaluation and Flow Control

When a script runs, it simply runs in sequence, one command after another.
Selenese, by itself, does not support condition statements (if-else, etc.) or iteration (for, while, etc.). Many
useful tests can be conducted without flow control. However, for a functional test of dynamic content,
possibly involving multiple pages, programming logic is often needed.

When flow control is needed, there are three options:

1. Run the script using Selenium-RC and a client library such as Java or PHP to utilize the
programming languages flow control features.
2. Run a small JavaScript snippet from within the script using the storeEval command.
3. Install the goto_sel_ide.js extension.

Most testers will export the test script into a programming language file that uses the Selenium-RC API (see
the Selenium-IDE chapter). However, some organizations prefer to run their scripts from Selenium-IDE
whenever possible (for instance, when they have many junior-level people running tests for them, or when
programming skills are lacking). If this is your case, consider a JavaScript snippet or the goto_sel_ide.js
extension.

Store Commands and Selenium Variables

You can use Selenium variables to store constants at the beginning of a script. Also, when combined with a
data-driven test design (discussed in a later section), Selenium variables can be used to store values passed to
your test program from the command-line, from another program, or from a file.

The plain store command is the most basic of the many store commands and can be used to simply store a
constant value in a selenium variable. It takes two parameters, the text value to be stored and a selenium
variable. Use the standard variable naming conventions of only alphanumeric characters when choosing a
name for your variable.

Command Target Value

store paul@mysite.org userName
Later in your script, youll want to use the stored value of your variable. To access the value of a variable,
enclose the variable in curly brackets ({}) and precede it with a dollar sign like this.

Command Target Value

verifyText //div/p ${userName}
A common use of variables is for storing input for an input field.

Command Target Value

type id=logi ${userName}
n
Selenium variables can be used in either the first or second parameter and are interpreted by Selenium prior
to any other operations performed by the command. A Selenium variable may also be used within a locator
expression.

An equivalent store command exists for each verify and assert command. Here are a couple more commonly
used store commands.

storeElementPresent
This corresponds to verifyElementPresent. It simply stores a boolean valuetrue or falsedepending on
whether the UI element is found.
storeText
StoreText corresponds to verifyText. It uses a locater to identify specific page text. The text, if found, is
stored in the variable. StoreText can be used to extract text from the page being tested.

storeEval
This command takes a script as its first parameter. Embedding JavaScript within Selenese is covered in the
next section. StoreEval allows the test to store the result of running the script in a variable.

JavaScript and Selenese Parameters

JavaScript can be used with two types of Selenese parameters: script and non-script (usually expressions). In
most cases, youll want to access and/or manipulate a test case variable inside the JavaScript snippet used as
a Selenese parameter. All variables created in your test case are stored in a JavaScript associative array. An
associative array has string indexes rather than sequential numeric indexes. The associative array containing
your test cases variables is named storedVars. Whenever you wish to access or manipulate a variable within
a JavaScript snippet, you must refer to it as storedVars[yourVariableName].

JavaScript Usage with Script Parameters

Several Selenese commands specify a script parameter including assertEval, verifyEval, storeEval, and
waitForEval. These parameters require no special syntax. A Selenium-IDE user would simply place a
snippet of JavaScript code into the appropriate field, normally the Target field (because a script parameter is
normally the first or only parameter).

The example below illustrates how a JavaScript snippet can be used to perform a simple numerical
calculation:

Command Target Value

store 10 hits
storeXpathCount //blockquote blockquotes
storeEval storedVars[hi paragraphs
ts]-
storedVars[bl
ockquotes]
This next example illustrates how a JavaScript snippet can include calls to methods, in this case the
JavaScript String objects toUpperCase method and toLowerCase method.

Command Target Value

store Edith Wharton name
storeEval storedVars[na uc
me].toUpper
Case()
storeEval storedVars[na lc
me].toLower
Case()
JavaScript Usage with Non-Script Parameters
JavaScript can also be used to help generate values for parameters, even when the parameter is not specified
to be of type script. However, in this case, special syntax is requiredthe entire parameter value must be
prefixed by javascript{ with a trailing }, which encloses the JavaScript snippet, as in
javascript{*yourCodeHere*}. Below is an example in which the type commands second parameter value is
generated via JavaScript code using this special syntax:
Command Target Value
store league searchString
of
nations
type q javascript{stored
Vars[searchStrin
g].toUpperCase(
)}

echo - The Selenese Print Command

Selenese has a simple command that allows you to print text to your tests output. This is useful for
providing informational progress notes in your test which display on the console as your test is running.
These notes also can be used to provide context within your test result reports, which can be useful for
finding where a defect exists on a page in the event your test finds a problem. Finally, echo statements can be
used to print the contents of Selenium variables.

Alerts, Popups, and Multiple Windows

Suppose that you are testing a page that looks like this.

1 <!DOCTYPE HTML>
2 <html>
3 <head>
4 <script type="text/javascript">
5 function output(resultText){
6 document.getElementById('output').childNodes[0].nodeValue=resultText;
7 }
8
9 function show_confirm(){
10 var confirmation=confirm("Chose an option.");
11 if (confirmation==true){
12 output("Confirmed.");
13 }
14 else{
15 output("Rejected!");
16 }
17 }
18
19 function show_alert(){
20 alert("I'm blocking!");
21 output("Alert is gone.");
22 }
23 function show_prompt(){
24 var response = prompt("What's the best web QA tool?","Selenium");
25 output(response);
26 }
27 function open_window(windowName){
28 window.open("newWindow.html",windowName);
29 }
30 </script>
31 </head>
32 <body>
33
34 <input type="button" id="btnConfirm" onclick="show_confirm()" value="Show confirm box" />
35 <input type="button" id="btnAlert" onclick="show_alert()" value="Show alert" />
36 <input type="button" id="btnPrompt" onclick="show_prompt()" value="Show prompt" />
37 <a href="newWindow.html" id="lnkNewWindow" target="_blank">New Window Link</a>
38 <input type="button" id="btnNewNamelessWindow" onclick="open_window()" value="Open Nameless Window" />
39 <input type="button" id="btnNewNamedWindow" onclick="open_window('Mike')" value="Open Named Window"
40
41 <br />
42 <span id="output">
43 </span>
44 </body>
45 </html>

The user must respond to alert/confirm boxes, as well as moving focus to newly opened popup windows.
Fortunately, Selenium can cover JavaScript pop-ups.

But before we begin covering alerts/confirms/prompts in individual detail, it is helpful to understand the
commonality between them. Alerts, confirmation boxes and prompts all have variations of the following

Command Description
assertFoo(pattern) throws error if
pattern
doesnt match
the text of the
pop-up
assertFooPresent throws error if
pop-up is not
available
assertFooNotPresent throws error if
any pop-up is
present
storeFoo(variable) stores the text
of the pop-up
in a variable
storeFooPresent(varia stores the text
ble) of the pop-up
in a variable
and returns
true or false
When running under Selenium, JavaScript pop-ups will not appear. This is because the function calls are
actually being overridden at runtime by Seleniums own JavaScript. However, just because you cannot see
the pop-up doesnt mean you dont have to deal with it. To handle a pop-up, you must call its
assertFoo(pattern) function. If you fail to assert the presence of a pop-up your next command will be blocked
and you will get an error similar to the following [error] Error: There was an unexpected Confirmation!
[Chose an option.]

Alerts
Lets start with alerts because they are the simplest pop-up to handle. To begin, open the HTML sample
above in a browser and click on the Show alert button. Youll notice that after you close the alert the text
Alert is gone. is displayed on the page. Now run through the same steps with Selenium IDE recording, and
verify the text is added after you close the alert. Your test will look something like this:

Command Target Value

open /
click btnAlert
Command Target Value
assertAlert Im
blocking!
verifyTextPresent Alert is
gone.
You may be thinking Thats odd, I never tried to assert that alert. But this is Selenium-IDE handling and
closing the alert for you. If you remove that step and replay the test you will get the following error [error]
Error: There was an unexpected Alert! [I'm blocking!]. You must include an assertion of the alert to
acknowledge its presence.

If you just want to assert that an alert is present but either dont know or dont care what text it contains, you
can use assertAlertPresent. This will return true or false, with false halting the test.

Confirmations
Confirmations behave in much the same way as alerts, with assertConfirmation and
assertConfirmationPresent offering the same characteristics as their alert counterparts. However, by default
Selenium will select OK when a confirmation pops up. Try recording clicking on the Show confirm box
button in the sample page, but click on the Cancel button in the popup, then assert the output text. Your test
may look something like this:

Command Target Value

open /
click btnConfirm
chooseCancelOnNextConfirmation
assertConfirmation Choose an
option.
verifyTextPresent Rejected
The chooseCancelOnNextConfirmation function tells Selenium that all following confirmation should return
false. It can be reset by calling chooseOkOnNextConfirmation.

You may notice that you cannot replay this test, because Selenium complains that there is an unhandled
confirmation. This is because the order of events Selenium-IDE records causes the click and
chooseCancelOnNextConfirmation to be put in the wrong order (it makes sense if you think about it,
Selenium cant know that youre cancelling before you open a confirmation) Simply switch these two
commands and your test will run fine.

Prompts
Prompts behave in much the same way as alerts, with assertPrompt and assertPromptPresent offering the
same characteristics as their alert counterparts. By default, Selenium will wait for you to input data when the
prompt pops up. Try recording clicking on the Show prompt button in the sample page and enter
Selenium into the prompt. Your test may look something like this:

Command Target Value

open /
answerOnNextPrompt Selenium!
click id=btnProm
pt
assertPrompt Whats the
best web
QA tool?
Command Target Value
verifyTextPresent Selenium!
If you choose cancel on the prompt, you may notice that answerOnNextPrompt will simply show a target of
blank. Selenium treats cancel and a blank entry on the prompt basically as the same thing.

Debugging
Debugging means finding and fixing errors in your test case. This is a normal part of test case development.

We wont teach debugging here as most new users to Selenium will already have some basic experience with
debugging. If this is new to you, we recommend you ask one of the developers in your organization.

Breakpoints and Startpoints

The Sel-IDE supports the setting of breakpoints and the ability to start and stop the running of a test case,
from any point within the test case. That is, one can run up to a specific command in the middle of the test
case and inspect how the test case behaves at that point. To do this, set a breakpoint on the command just
before the one to be examined.

To set a breakpoint, select a command, right-click, and from the context menu select Toggle Breakpoint.
Then click the Run button to run your test case from the beginning up to the breakpoint.

It is also sometimes useful to run a test case from somewhere in the middle to the end of the test case or up to
a breakpoint that follows the starting point. For example, suppose your test case first logs into the website
and then performs a series of tests and you are trying to debug one of those tests. However, you only need to
login once, but you need to keep rerunning your tests as you are developing them. You can login once, then
run your test case from a startpoint placed after the login portion of your test case. That will prevent you
from having to manually logout each time you rerun your test case.

To set a startpoint, select a command, right-click, and from the context menu select Set/Clear Start Point.
Then click the Run button to execute the test case beginning at that startpoint.

Stepping Through a Testcase

To execute a test case one command at a time (step through it), follow these steps:

1. Start the test case running with the Run button from the toolbar.

2. Immediately pause the executing test case with the Pause button.

3. Repeatedly select the Step button.

Find Button
The Find button is used to see which UI element on the currently displayed webpage (in the browser) is used
in the currently selected Selenium command. This is useful when building a locator for a commands first
parameter (see the section on locators in the Selenium Commands chapter). It can be used with any
command that identifies a UI element on a webpage, i.e. click, clickAndWait, type, and certain assert and
verify commands, among others.
From Table view, select any command that has a locator parameter. Click the Find button. Now look on the
webpage: There should be a bright green rectangle enclosing the element specified by the locator parameter.

Page Source for Debugging

Often, when debugging a test case, you simply must look at the page source (the HTML for the webpage
youre trying to test) to determine a problem. Firefox makes this easy. Simply right-click the webpage and
select View->Page Source. The HTML opens in a separate window. Use its Search feature (Edit=>Find) to
search for a keyword to find the HTML for the UI element youre trying to test.

Alternatively, select just that portion of the webpage for which you want to see the source. Then right-click
the webpage and select View Selection Source. In this case, the separate HTML window will contain just a
small amount of source, with highlighting on the portion representing your selection.

Locator Assistance
Whenever Selenium-IDE records a locator-type argument, it stores additional information which allows the
user to view other possible locator-type arguments that could be used instead. This feature can be very useful
for learning more about locators, and is often needed to help one build a different type of locator than the
type that was recorded.

This locator assistance is presented on the Selenium-IDE window as a drop-down list accessible at the right
end of the Target field (only when the Target field contains a recorded locator-type argument). Below is a
snapshot showing the contents of this drop-down for one command. Note that the first column of the drop-
down provides alternative locators, whereas the second column indicates the type of each alternative.
Writing a Test Suite
A test suite is a collection of test cases which is displayed in the leftmost pane in the IDE. The test suite pane
can be manually opened or closed via selecting a small dot halfway down the right edge of the pane (which
is the left edge of the entire Selenium-IDE window if the pane is closed).

The test suite pane will be automatically opened when an existing test suite is opened or when the user
selects the New Test Case item from the File menu. In the latter case, the new test case will appear
immediately below the previous test case.

Selenium-IDE also supports loading pre-existing test cases by using the File -> Add Test Case menu option.
This allows you to add existing test cases to a new test suite.

A test suite file is an HTML file containing a one-column table. Each cell of each row in the <tbody> section
contains a link to a test case. The example below is of a test suite containing four test cases:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Sample Selenium Test Suite</title>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" border="1">
 <thead>
<tr><td>Test Cases for De Anza A-Z Directory Links</td></tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td><a href="./a.html">A Links</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="./b.html">B Links</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="./c.html">C Links</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="./d.html">D Links</a></td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Note

Test case files should not have to be co-located with the test suite file that invokes them. And on Mac OS and
Linux systems, that is indeed the case. However, at the time of this writing, a bug prevents Windows users
from being able to place the test cases elsewhere than with the test suite that invokes them.

User Extensions
User extensions are JavaScript files that allow one to create his or her own customizations and features to
add additional functionality. Often this is in the form of customized commands although this extensibility is
not limited to additional commands.

There are a number of useful extensions created by users.

IMPORTANT: THIS SECTION IS OUT OF DATEWE WILL BE REVISING THIS SOON.

Perhaps the most popular of all Selenium-IDE extensions is one which provides flow control in the form of
while loops and primitive conditionals. This extension is the goto_sel_ide.js. For an example of how to use
the functionality provided by this extension, look at the page created by its author.

To install this extension, put the pathname to its location on your computer in the Selenium Core extensions
field of Selenium-IDEs Options=>Options=>General tab.

After selecting the OK button, you must close and reopen Selenium-IDE in order for the extensions file to be
read. Any change you make to an extension will also require you to close and reopen Selenium-IDE.

Information on writing your own extensions can be found near the bottom of the Selenium Reference
document.
Sometimes it can prove very useful to debug step by step Selenium IDE and your User Extension. The only
debugger that appears able to debug XUL/Chrome based extensions is Venkman which is supported in
Firefox until version 32 included. The step by step debug has been verified to work with Firefox 32 and
Selenium IDE 2.9.0.

Format
Format, under the Options menu, allows you to select a language for saving and displaying the test case. The
default is HTML.

If you will be using Selenium-RC to run your test cases, this feature is used to translate your test case into a
programming language. Select the language, e.g. Java, PHP, you will be using with Selenium-RC for
developing your test programs. Then simply save the test case using File=>Export Test Case As. Your test
case will be translated into a series of functions in the language you choose. Essentially, program code
supporting your test is generated for you by Selenium-IDE.

Also, note that if the generated code does not suit your needs, you can alter it by editing a configuration file
which defines the generation process. Each supported language has configuration settings which are editable.
This is under the Options=>Options=>Formats tab.

Note

At the time of this writing, this feature is not yet supported by the Selenium developers. However the author
has altered the C# format in a limited manner and it has worked well.

Executing Selenium-IDE Tests on Different Browsers

While Selenium-IDE can only run tests against Firefox, tests developed with Selenium-IDE can be run
against other browsers, using a simple command-line interface that invokes the Selenium-RC server. This
topic is covered in the Run Selenese tests section on Selenium-RC chapter. The -htmlSuite command-line
option is the particular feature of interest.

Troubleshooting
Below is a list of image/explanation pairs which describe frequent sources of problems with Selenium-IDE:

Table view is not available with this format.

This message can be occasionally displayed in the Table tab when Selenium IDE is launched. The
workaround is to close and reopen Selenium IDE. See issue 1008. for more information. If you are able to
reproduce this reliably then please provide details so that we can work on a fix.

error loading test case: no command found

Youve used File=>Open to try to open a test suite file. Use File=>Open Test Suite instead.

An enhancement request has been raised to improve this error message. See issue 1010.
This type of error may indicate a timing problem, i.e., the element specified by a locator in your command
wasnt fully loaded when the command was executed. Try putting a pause 5000 before the command to
determine whether the problem is indeed related to timing. If so, investigate using an appropriate waitFor*
or *AndWait command before the failing command.

Whenever your attempt to use variable substitution fails as is the case for the open command above, it
indicates that you havent actually created the variable whose value youre trying to access. This is
sometimes due to putting the variable in the Value field when it should be in the Target field or vice versa.
In the example above, the two parameters for the store command have been erroneously placed in the
reverse order of what is required. For any Selenese command, the first required parameter must go in the
Target field, and the second required parameter (if one exists) must go in the Value field.

error loading test case: [Exception... Component returned failure code: 0x80520012
(NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) [nsIFileInputStream.init] nresult: 0x80520012
(NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) location: JS frame :: chrome://selenium-ide/content/file-utils.js ::
anonymous :: line 48 data: no]

One of the test cases in your test suite cannot be found. Make sure that the test case is indeed located where
the test suite indicates it is located. Also, make sure that your actual test case files have the .html extension
both in their filenames, and in the test suite file where they are referenced.

An enhancement request has been raised to improve this error message. See issue 1011.
Your extension files contents have not been read by Selenium-IDE. Be sure you have specified the proper
pathname to the extensions file via Options=>Options=>General in the Selenium Core extensions field.
Also, Selenium-IDE must be restarted after any change to either an extensions file or to the contents of the
Selenium Core extensions field.