Comments on: Using Selenium for automated functional testing of ASP.NET applications

By: Troy Scheffel

Troy Scheffel — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:32:31 +0000

I’ve been using Selenium to test ASP.Net applications for a few days but it has quickly impressed me. Yes, it takes a day or so to really get the hang of it and to see the possibilities. And yes, the documentation is substandard but smart people know how to turn Google into their personal library. There is a wealth of quality Selenium info out there.

If you’re receiving errors when running Selenium Core then you’ve not set it up correctly, which is fairly typical at first. Some errors have to do with permissions if you copy files from one server to another but that happens with any file that needs to be served up by a web browser.

I had to deal with 3 files to run my own tests:
(1) I copied an existing test file to make Test_Login.aspx which contains commands to test my app’s login screen.
(2) I copied TestSuite.html and modified it so it contains only a reference to my new ./Test_Login.html file.
(3) I copied TestRunner.hta and modified it to point to MyTestSuite.html instead of TestSuite.html.

I made a SeleniumTestFramework folder under my web app’s root, and copied Core and Tests folders into it. After that I was able to double-click MyTestRunner.hta in Windows Explorer to launch the test framework. It works beautifully.

Bottom line: like most any good software tool it takes some elbow grease & smarts to wield properly but once it is working for you, the payoff is golden.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:45:30 +0000

Great intro, too bad I can’t get Selenium to work on my machine.
I can run the “dogfood” tests that come with it, but can’t execute any home made or recorded tests.

When I try, in IE 6 (yes, we are still using it here…) I get a javascript error ‘this.link’ has no properties.
The error points to the following line of code in selenium-testrunner.js
this.link.onclick = fnBindAsEventListener(this._onClick, this);
help!

By: Happy Selenium User

Happy Selenium User — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:32:17 +0000

BTW, if you are using Selenium-RC, you will have to do: java -jar selenium-server.jar -multiWindow. It’ll be easier if you call this with a .bat file and use System.Threading;

proc = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(”c:\\Selenium\\selenium.bat”);

selenium = new DefaultSelenium(”localhost”, 4444, “*iexplore”, “http://test”);

etc..etc.. get the picture?

By: Eyang

Eyang — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:23:32 +0000

Selenium RC is working fine for me and I love it. It gets the job done and keeps me coding in C#.

By: ERobert

ERobert — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:38:23 +0000

I tried the selenium tutorial from http://www.openqa.org/selenium-rc/tutorial.html and I cannot get it to work. I am impressed by the all architecture.
But both IE and Firefox do not load the page when I run
- cmd=getNewBrowserSession&1=*iexplore&2=http://www.google.com
or
- cmd=getNewBrowserSession&1=*firefox&2=http://www.google.com

I do not understand why people would write a tutorial and do not make sure it works or that it is understandable. Could by that it was not updated lately.

Peter may be you could try for us and report if I am an idiot or there is something wrong.

By: FTorres

FTorres — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:45:44 +0000

If you are interested in writing, debugging and running web testing with C# or VB.NET and the different flavors of Visual Studio (Including the free express) try http://www.InCisif.net.

InCisif.net is an automation tool designed to implement client-side functional testing of web applications under Internet Explorer 6.x or 7.x, using the C# or VB.NET language.

By: swrna

swrna — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:06:36 +0000

Is there any user documentation available for new users?

By: Jasper

Jasper — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 14:56:15 +0000

Hi Peter,
I know i am very late on this post but i am trying to get code coverage from selenium. I am able to get coverage from unittest ran against an instance of cassini webserver. But it seems that only coverage from aspx files is generated. Have you been able to produce coverage? I would like to hear from you.

Thanks in advance.
Jasper

By: mad_selenium_user

mad_selenium_user — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:14:03 +0000

If only it were as easy as you describe. This example is deceptive. I’ve seen all the little apps that show little things but havent heard of or seen any big achivements with selenium RC and asp.net.

See you will run into many problems. Problems that hinder most opensource projects. No Documentation, no code samples and a slew of special rules that will make your project go behind schedule while trying to get it to work.

I, like most others, was very happy to learn about the IDE, RC and getting it to work with C#. Well, so far its been short lived. Nothing is working.

Maybe you are smarter than me and can get it to work for you.

Best of luck!

By: Satish

Satish — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:44:50 +0000

Thanks