Chapter 1, Creating a Fast Feedback Loop, shows you how to build a small but powerful Selenium framework that enables you to get started quickly. We will focus on building something that enables people to run Selenium tests quickly and easily without having to download and configure libraries and external binaries themselves.

Chapter 2, Producing the Right Feedback When Failing, shows you how to get the framework, which was built in the first chapter, running on a continuous integration server. We will then extend the framework so that it can connect to Sauce Labs (or any other Selenium Grid) and take screenshots when tests fail. We will finish off by looking at stack traces and how we can use the information in them to find out why our tests fail.

Chapter 3, Exceptions Are Actually Oracles, examines common exceptions that are thrown by Selenium when running tests. We will work through the exceptions in detail and explore ways to make sure that our tests don't throw them when they shouldn't.

Chapter 4, The Waiting Game, explores the most common cause behind test failures in automation. It will explain in detail how waits work in Selenium and how you should use them to ensure that you have stable and reliable tests.

Chapter 5, Working with Effective Page Objects, shows you how to use page objects in Selenium. It focuses on proper separation of concerns and also demonstrates how to use the Page Factory classes in the Selenium support package. It finishes off by demonstrating how to build fluent page objects.

Chapter 6, Utilizing the Advanced User Interactions API, shows how you can automate challenging scenarios such as hover menus and drag-and-drop controls. It will also highlight some of the problems that you may come across when using the Advanced User Interactions API.

Chapter 7, JavaScript Execution with Selenium, introduces the JavaScript executor and shows how you can use it to work around complex automation problems. We will also look at how we can execute asynchronous scripts that use a callback to notify Selenium that they have completed execution.

Chapter 8, Keeping It Real, shows you what cannot be done with Selenium. We will then go through a series of scenarios that demonstrate how to extend Selenium to work with external libraries and applications so that we can use the right tool for the job.

Chapter 9, Hooking Docker into Selenium, introduces Docker. We will have a look at how we can spin up a Selenium Grid using Docker and start the Docker containers as a part of the build process.

Chapter 10, Selenium – the Future, talks about how Selenium is changing as it becomes a W3C specification. You will also find out how you can help shape the future of Selenium by contributing to the project in multiple ways.

The following software are required for the book:

Generally, the more the browsers you install, the better. You will be able to perform all the exercises in this book if you have at least Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome installed.

* You can try using the older versions of Oracle JDK or OpenJDK, but your mileage may vary.

** The community edition of IntelliJ IDEA is free, but it's certainly worth purchasing a license to get access to the full functionality. You can use the older versions of IntelliJ IDEA or another IDE according to your preference. The code for this book has been written in IntelliJ IDEA 14.

*** If you are running Linux, you will be able to install Docker without having to use boot2docker.

This book is for testers who are interested in automation, have some experience working with Selenium, are competent with Java, and are looking forward to taking the next step in their learning journey.

Java is one of the most widely used languages in the enterprise world. You will often see Java coupled with Maven because of its extremely powerful dependency management and build capabilities. This book will show you how to start using these technologies to their full potential.

The theories in this book are transferable to any language. However, if you are not using Java, the code examples will be of limited use.

This book is not an introduction to basic Selenium functionality. If you have not encountered Selenium before, or if you want to learn the basics of Selenium, you should start out with Selenium 2 Testing Tools: Beginner's Guide, David Burns.

It is assumed that you will be able to do simple things like finding elements in the DOM with appropriate locators, and that you will have a reasonable level of Java knowledge. This book is not going to teach you how to write Java code.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Start off by creating a src/test/java directory, and then into this directory we will create a file called basicTest.java."

A block of code is set as follows:

package com.masteringselenium;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.testng.annotations.AfterMethod;
import org.testng.annotations.BeforeSuite;

public class DriverFactory {

    private static ThreadLocal<WebDriverThread> driverThread;

    @BeforeSuite
    public static void instantiateDriverObject() {
        driverThread = new ThreadLocal<WebDriverThread>() {
            @Override
            protected WebDriverThread initialValue() {
                WebDriverThread webDriverThread = new WebDriverThread();
                return webDriverThread;
            }
        };
    }

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

public class DriverFactory {

    private static List<WebDriverThread> webDriverThreadPool = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList<WebDriverThread>());
    private static ThreadLocal<WebDriverThread> driverThread;

    @BeforeSuite
    public static void instantiateDriverObject() {
        driverThread = new ThreadLocal<WebDriverThread>() {
            @Override
            protected WebDriverThread initialValue() {
                WebDriverThread webDriverThread = new WebDriverThread();
                webDriverThreadPool.add(webDriverThread);
                return webDriverThread;
            }
        };
    }

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

mvn clean install

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Let's start off by clicking on the Create New Project button."

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To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

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