How to Deploy Selenium grid on AWS / Amazon EKS

  

                                    Selenium Grid is good for parallel execution but maintenance is a nightmare in an era where you see a frequent upgrades to browsers and corresponding drivers. No sooner the usage of automation framework / selenium grid increases, scalability and maintenance becomes a challenge. To address such issues, we do have solutions based on dockers, docker swarm etc. Having said that, there are some caveats in scaling, managing container health etc.

Below solution would try to address most of them. Major chunks of the solution include Selenium, Zalenium, Docker, Kubernetes and Amazon EKS.

This article would outline the process of deploying Selenium grid(Zalenium) on AWS (Amazon EKS) using Kubernetes and Helm.

What do we achieve with this setup..?

• Scalability: EKS can scale the nodes and pods as per the given configuration.
• Visibility: Zalenium provides a feature to view the live executions on the containers.
• Availability: Amazon EKS cluster makes selenium grid available all the time.
• Maintenance: Low maintenance as the containers are destroyed after each execution.

Pre-requisites:

• An active Amazon AWS account.
• IAM user is created in AWS account
• AWS CLI is connected to AWS account providing the user credentials using local powershell or any terminal
                                                              OR
• Use AWS cloudshell which is automatically connected to logged in account.
• Install AWS CLI (for local terminal), kubectl, helm in the given order.

Lets Get Started!

Once the above pre-requisites are met, next task to deploy any application on kubernetes is to create a kubernetes cluster. There are different ways to create a cluster on AWS, I'll brief couple of ways to achieve the same.

First, Create cluster from AWS GUI.

1. Create master node or cluster 

• Open Amazon EKS console
• Choose Create Cluster
• Provide details like cluster name, k8s version, role
• Select VPC, security groups, endpoint access
• Further steps as shown on GUI which will make 'master' ready.

2. Create worker nodes and connect to the above created cluster.

• Create Node Group (Amazon EC2) instances.
• Choose the cluster, to which the above node group should get attached.
• Select security group, resources etc.,
• Define min and max number no. of nodes.

Sounds complex?. No issues, there is another simple and efficient way to make the whole process look simple.

Second, Create cluster using eksctl (The official CLI for Amazon EKS)

The above complex task can be achieved with a single command.

Hybrid App Automation using Appium

In the Mobile world, we see multiple types of apps namely Native App, Hybrid App & the browser based application, Web App. Also, we see multiple types of operating systems like Android, iOS, Windows, Firefox OS etc.

Automated testing of these many variation of apps, is very tricky & difficult task. Not all of them are supported by single automation tool. Having said that, Appium which is built over Selenium webdriver supports most of the OS & apps with various configurations.

In this article, you would know a way to automate the Hybrid App using AndroidDriver.

Prerequisites:

1. Android SDK is downloaded and installed. (ANDROID_HOME env. variable should be set)
2. Either Emulator or  Real device (USB debugging enabled) is available.
3. Appium desktop app or non GUI package is installed. 

Steps:

1. Create a java project in eclipse 'AppiumMobileTesting'.
2. Create a class 'TestHybridApp.java'.
3. Connect your device(USB debugging enabled), to system's USB port & accept if any confirmation pop ups.
4. Start Appium Server. Once the device is connected, open the 'Appium Inspector Session' providing the suitable capabilities.
5. Open the Hybrid app in the device and you see the same screen on inspector session.
6. Click on the required control in inspector session & then the related locator details are shown on the right hand side in appium inspector.

How to send Cookies from Web(GUI) to Web Service

Cookies: Browser Cookies are also referred as Internet Cookie,Web Cookie or HTTP Cookie. A cookie is a "small piece of data" sent from the website to the user's device while the user is accessing the website.
There are multiple ways these cookies are being used in modern world like authentication, browser state information, storing user personal information like name, address etc., tracking the user activity on web, etc., Different types of cookies satisfy different needs.

In certain cases, one might have to test web services which needs cookies to be passed as part of request. One way to address this, is to combine Web application plus web service test steps. 

Below code snippet would open the web application, capture the cookies stored by the application and pass it to web service using Rest Assured.


public class CookiesToWebServices {
static WebDriver driver;
static String driverPath = "C:/Drivers/chromedriver.exe";

public static void main(String[] args) {

System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver",driverPath);
ArrayList cookieList = new ArrayList();

String url = "www.testurl.com/testpath/id";
HashMap headermap = new HashMap<>();
headermap.put("Content-Type", "application/json");
headermap.put(....

HashMap queryParammap = new HashMap<>();
queryParammap.put("id", "12345");
queryParammap.put(....

Native App Automation using Appium

In the Mobile world, we see multiple types of apps namely Native App, Hybrid App & the browser based application, Web App. Also, we see multiple types of operating systems like Android, iOS, Windows, Firefox OS etc.

Automated testing of these many variation of apps, is very tricky & difficult task. Not all of them are supported by single automation tool. Having said that, Appium which is built over Selenium webdriver supports most of the OS & apps with different configurations.

In this article, you would know a way to automate the Native App using AndroidDriver.

Prerequisites:

1. Android SDK is downloaded and installed. (ANDROID_HOME env. variable should be set)
2. Either Emulator or  Real device (USB debugging enabled) is available.
3. Appium desktop app or non GUI package is installed. 

Steps:

1. Create a java project in eclipse 'AppiumMobileTesting'.
2. Create a class 'TestNativeApp' to add the automation code.
3. Connect your device(USB debugging enabled), to system's USB port & accept if any confirmation pop ups.

Connect Jira from Java using Jira REST API

Jira is one of the popular bug tracking tool developed by Atlassian. It also provides project management features inline with Agile methodology. Jira is basically written in Java & can integrate with source control programs like Perforce, Git, Clearcase, Subversion, TFS etc.
It also provides robust set of APIs which enables its integration with any system.

An interesting fact about its name 'JIRA': It is not an acronym, but a truncation of 'Gojira', the japanese name for 'Godzilla'.  :)

Example to Create Issue & Search Issue:

This example shows how to consume Jira REST APIs from Java using REST Assured libraries.

Step 1: Create a Project with dependent REST assured libraries.

NOTE: For the set up / usage of REST assured libraries can be found in another post.
https://advancedtestautomation.blogspot.in/2016/08/test-rest-web-services-using-rest.html

Selenium Tips and Tricks

Get the DOM Object into View:

At times, few actions are not performed on a DOM object until it is visible in the view-port. Below is the small code snippet to get the DOM object into view using WebDriver's 'JavascriptExecutor' interface. 

WebElement element = driver.findElement(By.id("someId"));
JavascriptExecutor js= (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
js.executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView(true);",element);

OR

((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("document.getElementById('text123').scrollIntoView(true);");

Selenium WebDriver Wait Commands:

For any automation scripts to work without any sync issues with application, wait statements are very important. Selenium WebDriver provide different types of Wait conditions to make automation scripts effective.

Below are different types of waits & its usage.

Integration of Selenium + Sikuli

Sikuli is a tool using Visual Recognition capability which automates anything seen on the screen of your computer running Windows, Mac, few Linux/Unix OS systems. It uses Image recognition powered by OpenCV to identify the GUI components.

The version of Sikuli is named as 'SikuliX'. It also comes with basic text recognition (OCR) feature to search text within images.Besides locating images on screen, it can handle mouse & keyboard events to interact with GUI elements. 

Selenium for Angular JS Pages

Selenium + NgWebDriver  =  Better AngularJS Support

Angular JS is a opensource web application framework based on Java-script. Any Angular JS implemented web page would have additional custom tag attributs like ng-app, ng-model, ng-bind, ng-repeat etc.

Automating the AngularJS based web application is possible using Selenium. However in certain cases where the web pages are built extensively using AngularJS  resulting in complex DOM structure, it is difficult to locate DOM elements with simple XPaths & CSS selectors.In this case, Protractor (an E2E test framework for Angular Applications) built on Java script version of Selenium makes it easy for identifying the locators easily.

Selenium 3 Impact & Changes

Selenium is out with new stable version - Selenium 3.0.1, and this blog would detail out changes & impact the new version of Selenium brings into automation testing. 

Selenium 3, is believed to have major changes in its implementation & quite a few changes to the existing automation.In Sel-3, the original Selenium Core is being taken off & replaced with the alternative implementation that’s backed by WebDriver. It means, Selenium RC users would run into issues & might need to tweak their scripts to support new implementation. However, for web driver users it is believed to be a simple drop-in upgrade.

Handle Windows Authentication Dialog in Automation - Selenium WebDriver

Windows Authentication dialogs are common when we are working in ODC environments.This would cause initial hickup for automation as the authentication pop-ups are out of DOM structure. This can handled in several ways like AutoIT, Sikuli, etc.

Below is one of the simplest way to handle.

Launch Browser with Extensions - Webdriver

Launching the selenium webdriver, by default opens the plain browser without any extensions.
But there is way, to launch the chrome browser along with the pre-installed extensions.

To load any chrome extension in webdriver, we need to package the extension to .crx file & refer the same file in the desired capabilities / chrome options to load when the browser is launched.

Follow the steps mentioned in the below link to create .crx file.
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/packaging

Refer the *.crx file path in your code & launch the browser.

Launch Selenium Browser in Emulation Mode or Mobile Mode

Responsive Design Websites are the hot website design in recent days which fits to all device resolutions. Testing the responsiveness of the website on multiple resolutions is very important.

In the absence of real devices or if the application is in development mode, one can launch the selenium browser in mobile/emulation mode by setting the desired capabilities.

Below code snippet would help in launching the browser in emulation mode.
NOTE: This option is very good alternative for Emulators while testing web-app responsiveness.

Capture Screenshot of required element using Selenium

Usually, the selenium tests would capture the complete screenshot of the application. Capturing multiple screens would increase the size of reports or at times it is unnecessary to capture whole screen.

Ever thought of capturing only required web element?
Yes! we can. Follow the below process to capture the required element.

//Find the web element
WebElement elm = driver.findElement(xpath or any locator);
File compFile = ((TakesScreenshot) driver).getScreenshotAs(OutputType.FILE);
BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(compFile);

//get the image location & save to a file.
Point pnt = elm.getLocation();
BufferedImage elmImg = image.getSubimage(pnt.getX(), pnt.getY(), elm.getSize().getWidth(), elm.getSize().getHeight());
ImageIO.write(elmImg, "png", compFile);

FileUtils.copyFile(compFile, new File("filepath/filename" + ".png"));

Basic 'Broken Link Checker' using Selenium WebDriver

Link Health is very important for any website to reach its customers.
One can make sure if all the links of the website are broken or not, using various available open source or licensed tools.

Below is one of the basic way of validating the links on a particular page using Selenium WebDriver.
NOTE: Can be part of your various regression tests.

Sample Code:

Test Video using Selenium WebDriver

Testing a video is always a challenging task. Most of the video based web sites are manually tested & are out of scope of automation.

However, the javascript executor in selenium webdriver will enable us to play around with the video components. Thus, few of the test scenarios w.r.t video testing can be automated using the below approach.

Sample Video: Video Component Sample

Video Component: JW Player, JW HTML5 Video Player

Test SVG Graphs Using Selenium WebDriver

At times, during functional testing validating the data in the graphs or charts become crucial to proceed further.On further analysis on dom structure, graph appears to be built on SVG. This complicates the automation testing.

Many a times, testers just leave the particular scenarios as not automatable saying Graphs / images are not automatable. But, that is not right. We'll have one or the other solution to automate everything. Yes! may not be 100 percent.

Sample SVG Graphs: SVG Sample Graphs

Below approach let you know a way to automate SVG graphs using Selenium WebDriver.