Organizing and Executing Selenium Code

Scaling Selenium execution with an IDE and a Test Runner library

If you want to run more than a handful of one-off scripts, you need to be able to organize and work with your code. This page should give you ideas for how to actually do productive things with your Selenium code.

Common Uses

Most people use Selenium to execute automated tests for web applications, but Selenium supports any use case of browser automation.

Repetitive Tasks

Perhaps you need to log into a website and download something, or submit a form. You can create a Selenium script to run with a service at preset times.

Web Scraping

Are you looking to collect data from a site that doesn’t have an API? Selenium will let you do this, but please make sure you are familiar with the website’s terms of service as some websites do not permit it and others will even block Selenium.

Testing

Running Selenium for testing requires making assertions on actions taken by Selenium. So a good assertion library is required. Additional features to provide structure for tests require use of Test Runner.

IDEs

Regardless of how you use Selenium code, you won’t be very effective writing or executing it without a good Integrated Developer Environment. Here are some common options…

Test Runner

Even if you aren’t using Selenium for testing, if you have advanced use cases, it might make sense to use a test runner to better organize your code. Being able to use before/after hooks and run things in groups or in parallel can be very useful.

Choosing

There are many different test runners available.

All the code examples in this documentation can be found in (or is being moved to) our example directories that use test runners and get executed every release to ensure all the code is correct and updated. Here is a list of test runners with links. The first item is the one that is used by this repository and the one that will be used for all examples on this page.

  • JUnit - A widely-used testing framework for Java-based Selenium tests.
  • TestNG - Offers extra features like parallel test execution and parameterized tests.
  • pytest - A preferred choice for many, thanks to its simplicity and powerful plugins.
  • unittest - Python’s standard library testing framework.
  • NUnit - A popular unit-testing framework for .NET.
  • MS Test - Microsoft’s own unit testing framework.
  • RSpec - The most widely used testing library for running Selenium tests in Ruby.
  • Minitest - A lightweight testing framework that comes with Ruby standard library.
  • Jest - Primarily known as a testing framework for React, it can also be used for Selenium tests.
  • Mocha - The most common JS library for running Selenium tests.
  • Kotest - A flexible and comprehensive testing framework specifically designed for Kotlin.
  • JUnit5 - The standard Java testing framework, fully compatible with Kotlin.

Installing

This is very similar to what was required in Install a Selenium Library. This code is only showing examples for what is being used in our Documentation Examples project.

Maven

Gradle

To use it in a project, add it to the requirements.txt file:

in the project’s csproj file, specify the dependency as a PackageReference in ItemGroup:

Add to project’s gemfile

In your project’s package.json, add requirement to dependencies:

Asserting


        WebElement message = driver.findElement(By.id("message"));
    driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html")

            var title = driver.Title;
            Assert.AreEqual("Web form", title);
    driver.manage.timeouts.implicit_wait = 500

      let title = await driver.getTitle();
      assert.equal("Web form", title);

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Setting Up and Tearing Down

Set Up


        String title = driver.getTitle();
        assertEquals("Web form", title);

Tear Down

Set Up

    driver.quit()

Tear Down

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Set Up

    driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome

    driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html')

Tear Down

  def start_session
### Set Up
    before(async function () {
      driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();
    });
### Tear Down
    after(async () => await driver.quit());

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Executing

Maven

mvn clean test

Gradle

gradle clean test

python first_script.py

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bundle exec rspec

Mocha

mocha runningTests.spec.js

npx

npx mocha runningTests.spec.js

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Examples

In First script, we saw each of the components of a Selenium script. Here’s an example of that code using a test runner:

package dev.selenium.getting_started;

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

import java.time.Duration;

import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertEquals;

public class UsingSeleniumTest {

    @Test
    public void eightComponents() {
        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
        driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");

        String title = driver.getTitle();
        assertEquals("Web form", title);

        driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofMillis(500));

        WebElement textBox = driver.findElement(By.name("my-text"));
        WebElement submitButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button"));

        textBox.sendKeys("Selenium");
        submitButton.click();

        WebElement message = driver.findElement(By.id("message"));
        String value = message.getText();
        assertEquals("Received!", value);

        driver.quit();
    }

}
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from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By


def test_eight_components():
    driver = webdriver.Chrome()

    driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html")

    title = driver.title
    assert title == "Web form"

    driver.implicitly_wait(0.5)

    text_box = driver.find_element(by=By.NAME, value="my-text")
    submit_button = driver.find_element(by=By.CSS_SELECTOR, value="button")

    text_box.send_keys("Selenium")
    submit_button.click()

    message = driver.find_element(by=By.ID, value="message")
    value = message.text
    assert value == "Received!"

    driver.quit()
View on GitHub
using System;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Chrome;

namespace SeleniumDocs.GettingStarted
{
    [TestClass]
    public class UsingSeleniumTest
    {

        [TestMethod]
        public void EightComponents()
        {
            IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

            driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");

            var title = driver.Title;
            Assert.AreEqual("Web form", title);

            driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitWait = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(500);

            var textBox = driver.FindElement(By.Name("my-text"));
            var submitButton = driver.FindElement(By.TagName("button"));
            
            textBox.SendKeys("Selenium");
            submitButton.Click();
            
            var message = driver.FindElement(By.Id("message"));
            var value = message.Text;
            Assert.AreEqual("Received!", value);
            
            driver.Quit();
        }
    }
}
View on GitHub
# frozen_string_literal: true

require 'spec_helper'

RSpec.describe 'Using Selenium' do
  it 'uses eight components' do
    driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome

    driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html')

    title = driver.title
    expect(title).to eq('Web form')

    driver.manage.timeouts.implicit_wait = 500

    text_box = driver.find_element(name: 'my-text')
    submit_button = driver.find_element(tag_name: 'button')

    text_box.send_keys('Selenium')
    submit_button.click

    message = driver.find_element(id: 'message')
    value = message.text
    expect(value).to eq('Received!')

    driver.quit
  end
end
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const {By, Builder} = require('selenium-webdriver');
const assert = require("assert");

  describe('First script', function () {
    let driver;
    
    before(async function () {
      driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();
    });
    
    it('First Selenium script with mocha', async function () {
      await driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html');
      
      let title = await driver.getTitle();
      assert.equal("Web form", title);
      
      await driver.manage().setTimeouts({implicit: 500});
      
      let textBox = await driver.findElement(By.name('my-text'));
      let submitButton = await driver.findElement(By.css('button'));
      
      await textBox.sendKeys('Selenium');
      await submitButton.click();
      
      let message = await driver.findElement(By.id('message'));
      let value = await message.getText();
      assert.equal("Received!", value);
    });
  
    after(async () => await driver.quit());
  });
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Next Steps

Take what you’ve learned and build out your Selenium code!

As you find more functionality that you need, read up on the rest of our WebDriver documentation.

Last modified April 6, 2025: [rb] fix code references to spec_helper (1ecff86607)