Selenium Webtests

The openSteam web interface (just called the ”Web” module) has continuously increased its functionality and thus coplexity of use during the past years of development. In the context of quality assurance it therefore turned out to be necessary to "proof" the correct functionality of the user interface in some way. The discussion on what tool to use for such a kind of "UI acceptance-test" ended up with a decision for the Selenium framework by OpenQA.

"Selenium is a test tool for web applications. Selenium tests run directly in a browser, just as real users do. And they run in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh [OpenQA homepage]".
The UI tests have been recorded or respectively constucted usind the Selenuim IDE (version 0.8.6) that is available as a Firefox plugin. For every small application of the openSteam web interface like for instance "creating a new user" or "browsing a users mailbox" a single test has been created to keep maintainability high. The tests have thereafter been combined in a test suite that can bee run using the Selenuim Core.

How to run the tests on your system

Some prerequisites have to be fullfilled to use the Webtests in this package:
  • A running installation of the openSteam server (version >= 2.2.x) and the web interface (web-package 2.2.x),
  • The Mozilla Firefox Webbrowser (version >= 1.5.x) with Selenium IDE add-on installed (version >= 0.8.6),
  • The first test in the test suite registers a testuser for the rest of the interface tests that will be run as this user. It is necessary that the server options
    • allow free user registration
    • login is activated automaticaly
    are set if all tests (including test user registration) shall be run in a row whithout interruption. Otherwise the testuser has to be created manually. For this case please create a user with the following data:
    Nickname: UI_Tester
    First Name: UI
    Name: Tester
    Password: uitester
  • The port of openSteams webserver has to be Port 80 (which is default)! Otherwise the tests will not run.
  • The popup-blocker of Firefox has to be disabled or popups from "selenium-ide" have to be allowed.
Here are the steps for testing your installation of the openSteam Web Interface.
  1. Place the contents of the archieve (Webtests.zip) into a single folder.
  2. Start Firefox and enter the following URL: chrome://selenium-ide/content/selenium/TestRunner.html?baseURL=http://localhost&test=file:///dir/testsuite.html where dir has to be replaced by the folder into that you just extracted the webtests.
  3. The Selenium Functional Test Runner will open up (see the screenshot below).

    The Selenium Functional Test Runner

    The control panel on the right lets you choose which tests (listet in the left panel) to run (all tests or a single one) and at which speed to run them. Highlight elements should be chosen and the speed slider should not be left at maximum speed, because of some timing problems we observed while testing.
  4. During the tests it is possible that certificates have to be accepted manually. If all tests run through and all commands are passed your installation of the web interface is ok.