Selenium IDE Tutorial (No Coding Automation) | TECHLISTIC

1. What is Selenium IDE?

Selenium IDE is one of the variant of Selenium tool. IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. Selenium IDE is a record and play based web automation tool used for automation testing. As it's a record and play tool, it does not require any programming language knowledge, YES!! You read it right, it doesn't require any coding. 

You just have to start the Selenium IDE browser extension and then perform the manual testing on the website or webpage, that's it. Selenium IDE will record all the actions that you manually performed on the website and create a automation script from that. You can store that script and use it in future to test the same functionality in automated way. You can also modify that script to add or remove any command from it.

Selenium IDE Video Tutorial (YouTube)

2. Features of Selenium IDE

1. It’s a record and play tool.
2. Supports Limited browsers: Comes as plugin with Firefox and Chrome only, so not other browsers are supported.
3. Coding is not required: If you want to automate using this tool. It will record your tests and generate automation scripts for you.
4. One can’t add coding logic like if/else or loops in the script: It can only be used for some very basic automation. As you cannot write your own logic or you won’t be able to put conditions or loops in your automation test script.
5. No code re-usability: As we cannot create methods in ide scripts which are in html.
6. Maintainability is quite high: Maintenance effort is quite high in IDE. If there are any changes in your application/software it would impact your automation scripts heavily.
7. Export Selenium IDE scripts to WebDriver script in any language of you choice.

3. Install and Setup Selenium IDE

1. Launch the browser for which you want to install Selenium IDE plugin, say launch Chrome.
2. Open official Selenium website to install Selenium IDE - https://www.selenium.dev/selenium-ide/
   

   
   

   
   
   
   
3. You would see the options for Firefox and Chrome on the page to install Selenium IDE.
4. We'll click on the Chrome Download button, it'll land us on the Selenium IDE plugin install page for Chrome browser.
5. Click on the "Add to Chrome" button. It'll install the Selenium IDE plugin for Chrome browser. 
   
   
6. It will give the success installation alert.
   
   
   
7. Then launch the Selenium IDE by clicking the plugin icon and it'll take you to the Welcome Screen.
   

4. Most Commonly used Selenium IDE Commands

General actions are: type, click on links, select dropdown option, multi-select, checking radio buttons and check boxes, uploading files and clicking on buttons, moving backward and scrolling. Above mentioned actions cover 90% of our testing. And it's fortunate to have Selenium IDE supports all these actions.

Commands	Description
open	To open URL
setTimeout	Setting Timeout Limit
windowMaximize	For Window Maximizing
store	Storing value in variable
echo	To print/log custom messages in console
clickAndWait	Clicking on link
goBackAndWait	To navigate backwards
type	To enter values in a text field
storeEval	Executing Javascript / Scroll
click	Checking Radio Button / Check box
select	To Select dropdown option
addSelection	For multiple selection boxes
assertTitle	To verify title

5. Record and Execute Automation Scripts with Selenium IDE

We'll record, save and execute some of the Selenium IDE scripts and do a hands-on.

5.1. Create Your First Automation Script "TestLinks" with Selenium IDE

We'll record our first automation script using Selenium IDE. We'll perform some simple actions, like open www.selenium.dev and click on it's menu buttons and save that script.

1. Click on the "Record a new test in a new project".
2. Type the name of your project, let's say "MyFirstProject".
3. Then enter the URL of the website that you want to automate and click Start Recording button.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Then it'll launch the Chrome browser with website URL entered just before. You can also see the message "Selenium IDE is recording" at the bottom of the page.
5. Maximize the window and perform some common actions, like click on the menu link one by one.
6. And then click "Stop Recording" from the Selenium IDE menu.
7. Now you would see a number of commands has been recorded in the Selenium IDE commands pane. This is your Selenium IDE script which is recorded for the actions that you just performed manually.
8. You can save this script with any name.
   
   

5.2. Run Your First Selenium IDE Script

You have recorded your first automation script successfully, now it's time to execute it.

1. For that click on the "Run current test" button. 
   
2. After clicking run button, it'll launch the browser, open the website url and execute all the commands/actions that were recorded before.
3. After execution, it'll give the execution successful or failed message at the right bottom of the Selenium IDE pane.
   
   
   
4. It also provides you the execution logs in the Log pane, present at the bottom.

5.3. Create Search Keyword Automation Script with Selenium IDE

Make sure Selenium IDE is launched.

1. Create a new test case by clicking on "+" button present alongside the "Tests". It'll ask you to enter name for your new test.
   
   
   
2. After entering the name say "SearchKeyword", click on the record button present on the right side of the menu bar.
   
   
   
3. Now it'll launch the chrome and open the url www.selenium.dev.
4. Start recording your test by entering keyword "Selenium IDE" in the search box and click enter.
5. And then right click on the "Selenium IDE" heading text on the webpage, click Selenium IDE option, mouse hover to Assert and then select "Text" option.
   
   
   
6. Assert Command: By using the assert text command, we are telling the script to verify that the heading text "Selenium IDE" is present on the web page after searching for it. If in future, that text will not be present on this page after searching, then the script will fail. So, assert commands are for validation and verifications purpose. You can assert any text, link or any web element present on the page.
7. Assertion command is basically used in the end of the script which validates that our test case is passed or failed.
8. You can save this project by clicking the save button and later on open the same project and execute the scripts in the same way as we executed in section 4.2.

6. Automate Demo Practice Form with Selenium IDE

Try automating Demo Sign Up Practice form using Selenium IDE.

• Launch Selenium IDE and start recording.
• Add a new test case.
• Enter base URL as https://www.techlistic.com/p/selenium-practice-form.html
• Fill out all the values in the web form and click submit button.
• Stop recording and save the script.

Here is the sample script for Demo Sign-up practice form:

Practice Form
Command	Target	Value
open	/
setTimeout	10000
windowMaximize
store	Selenium Tutorials | Demo Form for practicing Selenium Automation	EXPECTED_PAGE_TITLE
echo	"####### Clicking Link ########"
clickAndWait	link=Link Test
echo	"###### Using goBack command to navigate to previous page ######"
goBackAndWait
echo	"###### Typing First Name and Last Name ######"
type	name=firstname	Dustin
type	name=lastname	Taylor
echo	####### Performing Scroll Action #########
storeEval	selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().scrollTo(0,600)
echo	"###### Check Radio Buttons & Check boxes #######"
click	id=sex-1
click	id=exp-3
click	id=profession-1
click	id=tool-1
echo	"####### Performing File Upload Action #######
type	id=photo	C:\Users\admin\Desktop\pic.jpg
echo	####### Performing Scroll Action #########
storeEval	selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().scrollTo(0,1000)
echo	"####### Performing Select & Multi-Select Actions ########"
select	id=continents	label=Australia
addSelection	id=selenium_commands	label=Navigation Commands
addSelection	id=selenium_commands	label=Switch Commands
clickAndWait	id=submit
echo	${EXPECTED_PAGE_TITLE}
assertTitle	${EXPECTED_PAGE_TITLE}
echo	"###### PASSED - Test Completed Successfully #######"

7. Difference between Selenium IDE and WebDriver

First of all you should understand your automation needs and then only make a decision to choose Automation tool. We have already discussed the features of Selenium IDE Section 2 of this post, now let's have a look at the WebDriver features:

Selenium WebDriver -

1. It requires coding.
2. Open Source
3. It supports Java, C#, PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby.
4. Supports almost every browser: ff, chrome, ie, safari, opera.
5. Cross Platform: Supports every platform like Windows, Linux, Mac.
6. You can achieve code-re-usability.
7. Automation maintenance effort is less.
8. You can find WebDriver sample script here - First Selenium WebDriver Script

Next >>  Selenium Demo Websites

Author

Vaneesh Behl

Passionately working as an Automation Developer from more than a decade. Let's connect LinkedIn.