Stop using Selenium so much, stupid!

Selenium is really great tool which can help you to speed up testing process and decrease time needed for checking new releases. But do we really use it as we should?

Let’s look at “standard” selenium test flow. You don’t do it that way? Good for you!

PS: This test case is very high level, it is just for an example.

Scenario: Check if logged in user can apply on a job offer

Open Homepage
Click Login
Fill User field
Fill Password field
Click Login
Fill Search field
Click Search
Click Job Offer name on list of results
Click apply button
Fill the apply form
Confirm Apply

What it’s done here, it’s one of the paths real user can follow. It’s correct from business perspective, it mimics real user's behavior and it’s one of the worst possible way of using Selenium.

Why? I see two main issues here.

Don’t test more than you must!

Your job in this scenario is not to test whole user flow but apply functionality for logged in user. No less, no more. If you want to make sure login process works fine, write test(s) for login process and don’t let Selenium touch login button ever again.

What? But I must be logged in to check apply process! Yes, you do, so login in simplest and fastest possible way. Exact mechanism will depend on your application – use API, developer mode, whatever you can. Just don’t fill login and password fields.

Example of login by API (Java, RestAssured):

public static Map<String, String> logIn(String login, String password) {

  Utils.setRestApiBaseUri(TestRunEnvironment.getBaseUri();

  Utils.setRestApiBasePath("/index.php");

  Response

      response =

      given()

          .param("event", "login.doLogin")

          .formParam("loginUserLogin", login)

          .formParam("loginUserPassword", password)

          .formParam("rememberme", "true")

          .cookie("language", "EN")

          .expect().statusCode(202)

          .when()

          .post();



  Map<String, String> cookies = response.getCookies();

//rewrite all cookies into webdriver

for (Map.Entry<String, String> cookie : cookies.entrySet()) {

    TestManager.getTest().getWebDriver().manage()

        .addCookie(new org.openqa.selenium.Cookie(cookie.getKey(), cookie.getValue()));

 }

Every single action that you don’t really need to perform but you need results of it, can be performed in similar way (at least should be, if your application is testable).

So, how should our scenario really look?

Scenario: Check if logged in user can apply on a job offer

Login as user X using API
Get JobOffer url and open it 
--take ID from database and create url, use/prepare custom API to get an url, use part of application – whatever works
Click apply button
Fill the Apply form
Confirm Apply

Congratulation, you just cut your test execution time for about a half.

Get low, as low as you can!

One remark here – to use this approach, your application (or at least part of it) needs to be written in Service Oriented Architecture. I took backend in PHP and frontend in React for this example.

If your web application is built from services (backend and frontend), you can test most of the business logic before actual site even exists.

How? Let’s look at test pyramid.

All models are wrong; some models are useful – George Box

Probably everyone has seen that, so I won’t spend much time here. Selenium is on very top with biggest cost and smallest stability (in comparison to other types of tests, Selenium itself is quite stable). Going lower we have integration and contract tests and that’s the area I’m talking about. Cost much lower, stability and performance much higher that tests in Selenium. Perfect as a part of the service build.

Again, I won’t elaborate about contract and integration tests – there are tons of articles about it. What I want to highlight is that you can test most of the business logic on these layers. Use framework as Codeception to test backend PHP services on both layers. Check data validation, response codes – whatever you can. Similar with frontend services (react components in our case). Cypress provides the possibility to implement data validation (should we display alert for incorrect email?), user flow (will confirmation be displayed after click “Submit”?) and much more. That means, you don’t need to test all these things in selenium!

So… Do I even need Selenium?

Probably yes. You want to check if flow containing few components/services works fine but without fully testing logic of each of them. The scenario we prepared in previous paragraph is still valid. The difference is, that’s probably the only one you will need. Eventually, you tested everything else on lower layer.