Book Image

Selenium Framework Design in Data-Driven Testing

By : Carl Cocchiaro
Book Image

Selenium Framework Design in Data-Driven Testing

By: Carl Cocchiaro

Overview of this book

The Selenium WebDriver 3.x Technology is an open source API available to test both Browser and Mobile applications. It is completely platform independent in that tests built for one browser or mobile device, will also work on all other browsers and mobile devices. Selenium supports all major development languages which allow it to be tied directly into the technology used to develop the applications. This guide will provide a step-by-step approach to designing and building a data-driven test framework using Selenium WebDriver, Java, and TestNG. The book starts off by introducing users to the Selenium Page Object Design Patterns and D.R.Y Approaches to Software Development. In doing so, it covers designing and building a Selenium WebDriver framework that supports both Browser and Mobile Devices. It will lead the user through a journey of architecting their own framework with a scalable driver class, Java utility classes, JSON Data Provider, Data-Driven Test Classes, and support for third party tools and plugins. Users will learn how to design and build a Selenium Grid from scratch to allow the framework to scale and support different browsers, mobile devices, versions, and platforms, and how they can leverage third party grids in the Cloud like SauceLabs. Other topics covered include designing abstract base and sub-classes, inheritance, dual-driver support, parallel testing, testing multi-branded applications, best practices for using locators, and data encapsulation. Finally, you will be presented with a sample fully-functional framework to get them up and running with the Selenium WebDriver for browser testing. By the end of the book, you will be able to design your own automation testing framework and perform data-driven testing with Selenium WebDriver.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface

The TestNG Data Provider class


TestNG has a Data Provider feature that allows users to extract test data in any format. It returns an array of objects, which can be cast to a POJO (Plain Old Java Object; that is, no set of rules to follow) such as a JSONObject type. When creating the class with the method for extracting the data, users tag the method using the @DataProvider annotation.

The DataProvider method could be stored in the same class as the Test, but it makes more sense to create a generic static method in a separate class so all test classes can use the same DataProvider and format. Having a consistent format to encapsulate data will make it easier for users to maintain and enhance the framework and tests.

Finally, when storing the method in a separate class, the DataProvider method name and class must be passed to the @Test annotation as an attribute. We will explore a few examples in this section.

Note

The TestNG DataProvider JavaDoc is located at http://testng.org/doc/documentation...