Your first test with Python + WebDriver + PyCharm

Today I’d like You to try Python for Your functional Web tests. Why Python? Because I believe it’s much easier to start with if we’ll compare with Java or .Net and also in several cases Python (because it’s scripting language) can do much more things than even Java (with all cross platform functionality itself).

So let’s do everything from the scratch. Next screens and instructions are for Windows users because I’m sure that install and run Python on OSX or Linux is much easier and doesn’t need any specific explanations.

1. Install Python.

For this we’re going to https://www.python.org/downloads/ and download needed package.

As You can see that we’re able to download Windows installer and install Python without any problems – I did it in default directory, also have to underline that I’ll use Python 3.4.2 for this example. 

After installation we’ll need to create local variable PYTHON_HOME (which is really not mandatory, but will be useful) and check if Python added to the main Path. For that just follow screens below one by one.

If everything correct we have to able to see next screen after running command “python --version” in our command prompt.

And this is pretty much all for Python installation.

2. Selenium installation.

Here will be also pretty much straightforward process with adding Python language bindings for WebDriver. For Python we don’t need to download different browser drivers as we did for Java.

First open https://pypi.python.org/pypi/selenium – and download archive with selenium (see screen below). After downloading extract somewhere on the disk. Next go to Your Python folder e.g. “C:\Python34” and run command (in command line prompt) – “pip install –U selenium”. 

 After this command Python should install Selenium but I faced one issue during this installation and for that we need our extracted Selenium archive – You have to copy extracted folder “selenium” (with all files in it) to “C:\Python34\Lib” (see screen below). 

One more step – we have to ensure that “selenium” is also in the path variable (scree below).

We’re almost ready, actually we’re ready for writing and running scripts in Python. As I mentioned before Python scripting language so it doesn’t need any specific IDE or anything like that – we can use simple notepad for testing. But for future convenience I’d recommend You install PyCharm from JetBrains.

3. Installing PyCharm

I believe one really easy step – go to https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/ and download community edition, which totally free and provides all necessary functionality. For those who use IntelliJ Idea already – You just need to add Python language plugin and then create new Python project (also pretty simple)

After downloading and installing PyCharm we’re all set, so we have just one more step – actual test writing and running.

4. Writing and running first test.

On first two screens we’re creating new project in PyCharm – pretty straight forward process.

Then we have to check our settings for ensure our PyCharm will use needed Python interpreter. So go : “File > Settings > Project interpreter” or press “Ctrl + Alt + S” and make sure that correct Python distributive selected also there should be “selenium” in the list of packages (see screen below).

Last step – create a “test” package in project root directory and then Python file – e.g. “FirstWebDriverTest.py”.

Our test will do several simple steps:

    - Open browser (for this example I’ll use Chrome, but You can easily change that).

    - Navigate to http://www.allegro.pl.

    - Type in search box “Laptop”.

    - Press “Search” button.

    - Verify that first item from results list has “Laptop” in it’s title.

For Your convenience I’ll paste whole code below:

import unittest  

 from selenium import webdriver  

   

 class FirstWebDriverTest(unittest.TestCase):  

   

   def setUp(self):  

     self.driver = webdriver.Chrome()  

     self.driver.get("http://www.allegro.pl")  

     self.SEARCH_TEXT = "Laptop"  

     self.SEARCH_FIELD_ID = "//input[@id='main-search-text']"  

     self.SEARCH_BUTTON_ID = "//input[@class='search-btn']"  

     self.SEARCH_RESULT_ITEM_TITLE = "//article[@class='offer offer-brand']//h2//span"  

   

   def test_search_in_allegro_pl(self):  

     driver = self.driver  

   

     driver.find_element_by_xpath(self.SEARCH_FIELD_ID)\  

       .send_keys(self.SEARCH_TEXT)  

     search_button = driver.find_element_by_xpath(self.SEARCH_BUTTON_ID)  

     search_button.submit()  

   

     driver.implicitly_wait(5000)  

     result = driver.find_elements_by_xpath(self.SEARCH_RESULT_ITEM_TITLE)\  

       .__getitem__(0)\  

       .__getattribute__("text")  

     self.assertIn(self.SEARCH_TEXT, result)  

   

   def tearDown(self):  

     self.driver.close()  

If You’ll do copy and paste from this page make sure that after inserting code has original formatting (You can refer to screen above) because for Python it’s extremely important.

So now we can run our test – “Run > Run” or “Alt + Shift + F10”

Also You can do it through command prompt line (see screen below)

Hope this will be easy for You to start writing tests in Python and You’ll check how actually powerful this language is. One last thing – for this example with all downloading and installing steps I’ve spent about one hour (actually I’ve spent more for doing screens and describing steps :) ).

P.S. added project to repo: https://github.com/operep/Python_Test_Project.git, so now You'll be able simply clone that