Breaking News

Automate Amazon: CommonUtils, methods and exceptions

December 28, 2015 , , ,
This post is third of a series of nine. Need to go back to the beginning?

The Selenium WebDriver API provides the basic methods to manipulate a browser to perform actions, such as navigating to a web page, but it doesn't have all the functionality we would need. What if we wanted to add in exception handling, such as if the web page was not found? What if we wanted to throw a customized error to a log file when the page was not found? What if, even upon a success, we wanted to write a message to the log?

A Common Utilities library, such as one they are using at my workplace, can be developed to handle these cases. Each Selenium API method is wrapped in try / catch / throw blocks for exception handling, built-in with logging functionality. When things go wrong, clear and concise error messages will save a lot of time debugging if the issue was with the server, with the code of the site, or the tests themselves.



Creating Methods to Navigate to a Web Page


Navigating to Amazon.com's home page is pretty simple with WebDriver. All it takes is one driver.get statement in order to navigate to the login page:

 driver.get("http://www.amazon.com/");

But what if you wanted to add functionality to write to the log console every time you use WebDriver to navigate to a web page? This means you would have to enter two lines of code per driver.get statement.
  System.out.println("Navigating to: http://www.amazon.com/");  
  driver.get("http://http://www.amazon.com/");

Let's say you also wanted to add even more:
  • Logging functionality when an action is performed
  • Catch any errors if the action failed
  • Throw an error to the logs detailing if an error ever happened
  • Include any wait statements, if a page is known to be slow loading. 

To satisfy all these new requirements, at work they came up with the following method for their CommonUtils library, navigateToURL: 

 public void navigateToURL(String URL) {  
     System.out.println("Navigating to: " + URL);  
     System.out.println("Thread id = " + Thread.currentThread().getId());  
     try {  
       _driver.navigate().to(URL);  
     } catch (Exception e) {  
       System.out.println("URL did not load: " + URL);  
       throw new TestException("URL did not load");  
     }  
 }

To use this method, we can use this method in a test, passing in the URL as a String:

navigateToURL("http://www.amazon.com/");

Now imagine if you had a whole library where all the Selenium WebDriver functions are wrapped in try / catch / throw blocks, logging functionality is added, threads have identification numbers listed, and any optional wait statements are included.

Methods in the CommonUtils Library


These are the methods in the CommonUtility we can use:

  • navigateToURL(String URL)
  • getPageTitle()
  • getElement(By selector)
  • sendKeys(By selector, String value)
  • clearField(WebElement element)
  • click(By selector)
  • waitForElementToBeClickable(By selector )
  • waitForElementToBeVisible(By selector)

How to use the Methods:


Selectors can be found By Id or By CSS Selector. If we wanted to grab the Username textbox, the Password textbox, or the Sign In button of the Sign In page, we could:

  • Username: getElement(By.cssSelector("#ap_email")
  • Password: getElement(By.cssSelector("#ap_password")
  • Login Button: getElement(By.cssSelector("#signInSubmit")


... And wherever these CommonUtils methods are used, such as in the Page Objects, we need to:

  • Import the CommonUtils library. 
  • Extend the Class to inherit the methods declared in CommonUtils. 


All test code can be found on GitHub at Automate-Amazon.


CommonUtils.java
1:  package utils;  
2:  import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;  
3:  import org.openqa.selenium.*;  
4:  import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions;  
5:  import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions;  
6:  import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.Select;  
7:  import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.WebDriverWait;  
8:  import org.testng.TestException;  
9:  import java.util.ArrayList;  
10:  import java.util.List;  
11:  /**  
12:   * Created by tmaher on 12/21/2015.  
13:   */  
14:  public abstract class CommonUtils {  
15:    private static int timeout = 10;  
16:    public CommonUtils() {  
17:      _driver = DriverUtils.getDriver();  
18:    }  
19:    public static WebDriver _driver;  
20:    public WebDriverWait wait;  
21:    public Actions actions;  
22:    public Select select;  
23:    public void navigateToURL(String URL) {  
24:      try {  
25:        _driver.navigate().to(URL);  
26:      } catch (Exception e) {  
27:        System.out.println("FAILURE: URL did not load: " + URL);  
28:        throw new TestException("URL did not load");  
29:      }  
30:    }  
31:    public void navigateBack() {  
32:      try {  
33:        _driver.navigate().back();  
34:      } catch (Exception e) {  
35:        System.out.println("FAILURE: Could not navigate back to previous page.");  
36:        throw new TestException("Could not navigate back to previous page.");  
37:      }  
38:    }  
39:    public String getPageTitle() {  
40:      try {  
41:        return _driver.getTitle();  
42:      } catch (Exception e) {  
43:        throw new TestException(String.format("Current page title is: %s", _driver.getTitle()));  
44:      }  
45:    }  
46:    public String getCurrentURL() {  
47:      try {  
48:        return _driver.getCurrentUrl();  
49:      } catch (Exception e) {  
50:        throw new TestException(String.format("Current URL is: %s", _driver.getCurrentUrl()));  
51:      }  
52:    }  
53:    public WebElement getElement(By selector) {  
54:      try {  
55:        return _driver.findElement(selector);  
56:      } catch (Exception e) {  
57:        System.out.println(String.format("Element %s does not exist - proceeding", selector));  
58:      }  
59:      return null;  
60:    }  
61:    public String getElementText(By selector) {  
62:      waitUntilElementIsDisplayedOnScreen(selector);  
63:      try {  
64:        return StringUtils.trim(_driver.findElement(selector).getText());  
65:      } catch (Exception e) {  
66:        System.out.println(String.format("Element %s does not exist - proceeding", selector));  
67:      }  
68:      return null;  
69:    }  
70:    public List getElements(By Selector) {  
71:      waitForElementToBeVisible(Selector);  
72:      try {  
73:        return _driver.findElements(Selector);  
74:      } catch (Exception e) {  
75:        throw new NoSuchElementException(String.format("The following element did not display: [%s] ", Selector.toString()));  
76:      }  
77:    }  
78:    public List getListOfElementTexts(By selector) {  
79:      List elementList = new ArrayList();  
80:      List elements = getElements(selector);  
81:      for (WebElement element : elements) {  
82:        if (element == null) {  
83:          throw new TestException("Some elements in the list do not exist");  
84:        }  
85:        if (element.isDisplayed()) {  
86:          elementList.add(element.getText().trim());  
87:        }  
88:      }  
89:      return elementList;  
90:    }  
91:    public void click(By selector) {  
92:      WebElement element = getElement(selector);  
93:      waitForElementToBeClickable(selector);  
94:      try {  
95:        element.click();  
96:      } catch (Exception e) {  
97:        throw new TestException(String.format("The following element is not clickable: [%s]", selector));  
98:      }  
99:    }  
100:    public void scrollToThenClick(By selector) {  
101:      WebElement element = _driver.findElement(selector);  
102:      actions = new Actions(_driver);  
103:      try {  
104:        ((JavascriptExecutor) _driver).executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);", element);  
105:        actions.moveToElement(element).perform();  
106:        actions.click(element).perform();  
107:      } catch (Exception e) {  
108:        throw new TestException(String.format("The following element is not clickable: [%s]", element.toString()));  
109:      }  
110:    }  
111:    public void sendKeys(By selector, String value) {  
112:      WebElement element = getElement(selector);  
113:      clearField(element);  
114:      try {  
115:        element.sendKeys(value);  
116:      } catch (Exception e) {  
117:        throw new TestException(String.format("Error in sending [%s] to the following element: [%s]", value, selector.toString()));  
118:      }  
119:    }  
120:    public void clearField(WebElement element) {  
121:      try {  
122:        element.clear();  
123:        waitForElementTextToBeEmpty(element);  
124:      } catch (Exception e) {  
125:        System.out.print(String.format("The following element could not be cleared: [%s]", element.getText()));  
126:      }  
127:    }  
128:    public void waitForElementToDisplay(By Selector) {  
129:      WebElement element = getElement(Selector);  
130:      while (!element.isDisplayed()) {  
131:        System.out.println("Waiting for element to display: " + Selector);  
132:        sleep(200);  
133:      }  
134:    }  
135:    public void waitForElementTextToBeEmpty(WebElement element) {  
136:      String text;  
137:      try {  
138:        text = element.getText();  
139:        int maxRetries = 10;  
140:        int retry = 0;  
141:        while ((text.length() >= 1) || (retry < maxRetries)) {  
142:          retry++;  
143:          text = element.getText();  
144:        }  
145:      } catch (Exception e) {  
146:        System.out.print(String.format("The following element could not be cleared: [%s]", element.getText()));  
147:      }  
148:    }  
149:    public void waitForElementToBeVisible(By selector) {  
150:      try {  
151:        wait = new WebDriverWait(_driver, timeout);  
152:        wait.until(ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(selector));  
153:      } catch (Exception e) {  
154:        throw new NoSuchElementException(String.format("The following element was not visible: %s", selector));  
155:      }  
156:    }  
157:    public void waitUntilElementIsDisplayedOnScreen(By selector) {  
158:      try {  
159:        wait = new WebDriverWait(_driver, timeout);  
160:        wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(selector));  
161:      } catch (Exception e) {  
162:        throw new NoSuchElementException(String.format("The following element was not visible: %s ", selector));  
163:      }  
164:    }  
165:    public void waitForElementToBeClickable(By selector) {  
166:      try {  
167:        wait = new WebDriverWait(_driver, timeout);  
168:        wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(selector));  
169:      } catch (Exception e) {  
170:        throw new TestException("The following element is not clickable: " + selector);  
171:      }  
172:    }  
173:    public void sleep(final long millis) {  
174:      System.out.println((String.format("sleeping %d ms", millis)));  
175:      try {  
176:        Thread.sleep(millis);  
177:      } catch (InterruptedException ex) {  
178:        ex.printStackTrace();  
179:      }  
180:    }  
181:    public void selectIfOptionTextContains(By selector, String searchCriteria) {  
182:      waitForElementToBeClickable(selector);  
183:      Select dropdown = new Select(getElement(selector));  
184:      List options = dropdown.getOptions();  
185:      String optionText = "";  
186:      if (options == null) {  
187:        throw new TestException("Options for the dropdown list cannot be found.");  
188:      }  
189:      for (WebElement option : options) {  
190:        optionText = option.getText().trim();  
191:        boolean isOptionDisplayed = option.isDisplayed();  
192:        if (optionText.contains(searchCriteria) && isOptionDisplayed) {  
193:          try {  
194:            dropdown.selectByVisibleText(optionText);  
195:            break;  
196:          } catch (Exception e) {  
197:            throw new NoSuchElementException(String.format("The following element did not display: [%s] ", selector.toString()));  
198:          }  
199:        }  
200:      }  
201:    }  
202:    public void selectIfOptionTextEquals(By selector, String searchCriteria) {  
203:      waitForElementToBeClickable(selector);  
204:      Select dropdown = new Select(getElement(selector));  
205:      List options = dropdown.getOptions();  
206:      String optionText = "";  
207:      if (options == null) {  
208:        throw new TestException("Options for the dropdown list cannot be found.");  
209:      }  
210:      for (WebElement option : options) {  
211:        optionText = option.getText().trim();  
212:        boolean isOptionDisplayed = option.isDisplayed();  
213:        if (optionText.equals(searchCriteria) && isOptionDisplayed) {  
214:          try {  
215:            dropdown.selectByVisibleText(optionText);  
216:            break;  
217:          } catch (Exception e) {  
218:            throw new NoSuchElementException(String.format("The following element did not display: [%s] ", selector.toString()));  
219:          }  
220:        }  
221:      }  
222:    }  
223:    public List getDropdownValues(By selector) {  
224:      waitForElementToDisplay(selector);  
225:      Select dropdown = new Select(getElement(selector));  
226:      List elementList = new ArrayList();  
227:      List allValues = dropdown.getOptions();  
228:      if (allValues == null) {  
229:        throw new TestException("Some elements in the list do not exist");  
230:      }  
231:      for (WebElement value : allValues) {  
232:        if (value.isDisplayed()) {  
233:          elementList.add(value.getText().trim());  
234:        }  
235:      }  
236:      return elementList;  
237:    }  
238:  }
All Source Code can be found in T.J. Maher's Automate-Amazon repository. 


NEXT: We finally can write a Sign-In Test! >>

-T.J. Maher
 Sr. QA Engineer, Fitbit
 Boston, MA

// Automated tester for [ 9 ] month and counting!

Please note: 'Adventures in Automation' is a personal blog about automated testing. It is not an official blog of Fitbit.com.