Testing

Testing

This document contains notes on writing and executing tests.

Creating Selenium Tests Using Selenium IDE

To create a Selenium test, we highly recommend using the Selenium IDE plugin for Firefox. Using the Selenium IDE, your actions on the website can be recorded and then exported to Python. Use Firefox and go to http://seleniumhq.org/download/ to download and install the plugin. After it is downloaded, restart Firefox to complete the installation.

Next, start up a test server using python manage.py testserver fixtures/*. This creates a test database (separate from your development database) and loads the fixture data.

In Firefox, go to http://localhost:8000. Start the Selenium IDE by going to Tools->Selenium IDE. By default, it starts recording once you open the IDE. Create your test by navigating through the site as a user would. You have access to additional test assertion commands by right clicking on the page.

Once you are done, click on the red "record" icon on the Selenium IDE to stop it from recording. You can then export your test by going to "File->Export Test Case As->Python 2 (Remote Control)". We recommend saving these tests in a Selenium subdirectory of the page you are testing. We also recommend saving a copy of the test case (File->Save Test Case As) with a .sel extension in the same directory so that we can open it in the IDE.

Once the test is exported, it still needs to be edited to fit within our framework.

Editing Selenium tests to run within our test framework

When the test is exported, it needs to be edited a little to support our test framework. By default, a test comes out something like this (with some comments about the things we'll edit):

from selenium import selenium # We'll import a Mixin for selenium.
import unittest, time, re # We don't need to import unittest.  Instead, we will import Django's TestCase.

class sample_test(unittest.TestCase): # This will inherit from Django's TestCase and the Selenium mixin
    # Optional fixtures can be specified here
    def setUp(self):
        self.verificationErrors = []
        self.selenium = selenium("localhost", 4444, "*chrome", "http://localhost:8000/") # not needed
        self.selenium.start() # not needed
    
    def test_sample_test(self):
        sel = self.selenium
        sel.open("/")
        try: self.failUnless(sel.is_text_present("Welcome"))
        except AssertionError, e: self.verificationErrors.append(str(e))
    
    def tearDown(self):
        self.selenium.stop() # Not needed
        self.assertEqual([], self.verificationErrors)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main() 

Things that need to be changed:

• Replace from selenium import selenium with from noseselenium.cases import SeleniumTestCaseMixin. This contains the selenium class as well as some additional useful features like loading fixtures.
• unittest does not need to be imported. Instead, add the import statement from django.test import TestCase.
• Change the class definition to inherit from TestCase (Django's test case) and SeleniumTestCaseMixin. It should read something like class sample_test(TestCase, SeleniumTestCaseMixin):.
• You can import fixtures from the database. For example, to load the floors and users fixtures, add the line selenium_fixtures = ["fixtures/base_floors.json", "fixtures/test_users.json"].
• In setUp, remove the selenium initialization and self.selenium.start(). This will be handled by the mixin.
• In tearDown, remove self.selenium.stop().

After this, your tests should look something like this:

from noseselenium.cases import SeleniumTestCaseMixin
import time, re
from django.test import TestCase

class sample_test(TestCase, SeleniumTestCaseMixin):
    selenium_fixtures = []
    
    def setUp(self):
        self.verificationErrors = []
    
    def test_sample_test(self):
        sel = self.selenium
        sel.open("/")
        try: self.failUnless(sel.is_text_present("Welcome"))
        except AssertionError, e: self.verificationErrors.append(str(e))
    
    def tearDown(self):
        self.assertEqual([], self.verificationErrors)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main()

Running Selenium tests with the rest of the test suite

There are a few things you'll need to do before you run the exported Python Selenium tests from the command line.

• Make sure your requirements are up to date. Type pip install -r requirements.pip to install the latest requirements.
• It is HIGHLY recommended that you use a database backend other than SQLite3 because of issues with concurrency. To set up a different backend, consult Django's documentation http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/topics/install/#get-your-database-running.
• Next, you'll need to have the Selenium server running on your system. Download it from the Selenium downloads page http://seleniumhq.org/download/. Once downloaded, it can be started using java -jar selenium-server.jar.

After that, you can run the tests by using a Python script that adds the required parameters. Run python runtests.py to run all of the tests. You can also run tests for individual apps by passing in those apps as parameters. For example, python runtests.py pages.view_profile will run the tests in apps/pages/view_profile, including Selenium tests.