Chapter 16- What is Selenium - RC

What is Selenium - RC

Selenium-RC stands for Selenium Remote Control(also known as Selenium 1.0), was the main Selenium project that sustained for a long time before selenium Webdriver(Selenium 2.0) came into existance. Now Selenium RC is hardly in use as Webdriver has more powerful features ,however users can still continue to develop scripts using RC.

It allows us to write automated web application UI tests with the help of full power of programming languages such as java, C#, perl, python and php to create more complex tests like reading and writing files, querying a database, emailing test results.

NOTE : Selenium RC has been dealt just for understanding point of view and only webdriver is explained in detail as webdriver is more powerful and stable. Comparison between Selenium RC and Webdriver is dealt in later chapters.

Selenium RC Architecture

Selenium RC works in such as way that the client libraries communicate with the Selenium RC Server passing each Selenium command for execution. Then the server passes the Selenium command to the browser using Selenium-Core JavaScript commands.

The browser executes the Selenium command using its JavaScript interpreter.

Selenium RC comes in two parts.

• The Selenium Server launches and kills browsers inaddition to that it interprets and executes the Selenese commands. It also acts as an HTTP proxy by intercepting and verifying HTTP messages passed between the browser and the application under test.
• Client libraries that provide interface between each one of the programming language(java, C#, perl, python and php) and the Selenium-RC Server.

RC - Scripting

Now let us write a sample script using Selenium Remote Control. Let us use http://www.calculator.net/ for understanding Selenium RC. We will perform a Percent calcuation using 'Percent Calculator' that is present under 'Math Calculators' Module.

Step 1: Start the Selenium Remote Control(with the help of command prompt) as explained in environmental setup chapter.

Step 2: After launching Selenium RC, open eclipse and create "New Project" as shown below.

Step 3: Enter the project name and click 'Next' button.

Step 4: Verify the source, Projects, Libraries and Output folder and click 'Finish'.

Step 4: Right click on 'project' container and choose 'Configure Build Path'.

Step 5: Properties for 'selrcdemo' opens up. Navigate to 'Libaries' tab and select 'Add External JARs'. Choose the Selenium RC jar file that we have downloaded and it would appear as shown below.

Step 6: The referenced Libraries are shown as displayed below.

Step 7: Create a new class file by performing a right click on 'src' folder and select 'New' >> 'class'.

Step 8: Enter a name of the class file and enable 'public static void main' as shown below.

Step 9: The Created Class is created under the folder structure as shown below.

Step 10: Now it is time for coding. The below code has comments embedded to make the readers understand what has been put forth.

package selrcdemo;
import com.thoughtworks.selenium.DefaultSelenium;
import com.thoughtworks.selenium.Selenium;

public class rcdemo 
{
 public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException 
 {
  
 //Instatiate the RC Server
 Selenium selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444 , "firefox", "http://www.calculator.net");
 selenium.start();   // Start
 selenium.open("/");  // Open the URL
 selenium.windowMaximize();

 // Click on Link Math Calculator
 selenium.click("xpath=.//*[@id='menu']/div[3]/a");
 Thread.sleep(2500); // Wait for page load
 
 // Click on Link Percent Calculator
 selenium.click("xpath=.//*[@id='menu']/div[4]/div[3]/a");
 Thread.sleep(4000); // Wait for page load
 
 
 // Focus on text Box
 selenium.focus("name=cpar1");
 // enter a value in Text box 1
 selenium.type("css=input[name=\"cpar1\"]", "10");

 // enter a value in Text box 2
 selenium.focus("name=cpar2");
 selenium.type("css=input[name=\"cpar2\"]", "50");
 
 // Click Calculate button
 selenium.click("xpath=.//*[@id='content']/table/tbody/tr/td[2]/input");
 
 // verify if the result is 5
 String result = selenium.getText(".//*[@id='content']/p[2]");

  
 if (result == "5")
 {
  System.out.println("Pass");
 }else
 {
  System.out.println("Fail");
 }
  
 }

}

Step 11: Now, let us execute the script by clicking 'Run' Button.

Step 12: The script would start executing and user would be able to see the command history under 'Command History' Tab.

Step 13: The final state of the application is shown as below. The percentage is calculated and it displayed the result on screen as shown below.

Step 14: The output of the test is printed on the Eclipse console as shown below as we have printed the output to the console. In real time the output is written to a HTML file or in a simple Text file.