Join Dave Haeffner as he steps through the core tenets of good test and page object design, locators, and a repeatable and quantitative approach for assessing your test code. When you're done, you'll be able to see how your tests and page objects stack up, and what changes are needed to help them stand the test of time.

1. How To Grade Your
Selenium Tests

2. http://se.tips/getting-started-talk
http://se.tips/selenium-tips
http://se.tips/selenium-book

3. Let’s talk about tests

4. What Makes a Bad Test?
• Fails For No Good Reason
• Changes in AUT, Need to Update Test(s)
• Slow
• Unreliable
• Hard to Understand and Maintain

5. What Makes a Good Test?
• Written for BDD or xUnit test framework
• Test one thing (atomic)
• Each test can be run independently (autonomous)
• Anyone can understand what it is doing
• Group similar tests together
• Centralized setup/teardown
• Uses Page Objects

6. A Testing Rubric
(Each test starts with 100 points, deduct as necessary)
Item Belong in tests? Score
Selenium Commands No -3 per (max of -9)
Locators No -2 per (max of -8)
Selenium setup/teardown* No -20
Hard-coded sleeps No -5 per (max of -20)
Implicit wait calls No -10
Explicit Wait calls No -3
Conditionals No -5 (max of -20)
Calls to Page Objects Yes N/A
Assertion(s)* Yes N/A

7. Let’s talk about
Page Objects

8. http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PageObject.html

9. What Makes a Bad PO?
• Gigantic in size (e.g., hundreds or thousands of
lines in code)
• Over-reaching responsibility
• Contain overly complicated logic
• Return not enough or too much information to the
test (leaky abstraction)
• Assertions happening in the PO instead of the test

10. What Makes a Good PO?
• Contains State (e.g., locators)
• Contains Behavior (e.g., methods to interact with
the page)
• Returns some information about the page (e.g.,
new page object, text from the page, a boolean
result for some check, etc. — never a WebElement)
• Verifies page ready state as part of initialization
with a found Element

11. A Page Object Rubric
(Each Page Object starts with 100, deduct points as necessary)
Item Belong in POs? Score
> 200 lines of code No -5 per 50 lines over
Assertions No* -5 per (max of -20)
Hard-coded sleeps No -5 per (max of -20)
Implicit wait calls No -10
Explicit waits Yes N/A
Verify page ready state* Yes -8 if not verifying an
element
Locators* Yes N/A
http://se.tips/se-waiting-jim-evans

12. Let’s talk about locators

13. Locator Strategies
• Class
• CSS selectors
• ID
• Link Text
• Partial Link Text
• Tag Name
• XPath
Good locators are:
• unique
• descriptive
• unlikely to change
That rules a few of these out

14. Locator Strategies
• Class
• CSS selectors
• ID
• Link Text
• Partial Link Text
• Tag Name
• XPath
Good locators are:
• unique
• descriptive
• unlikely to change
That rules a few of these out

15. Locator Strategies
• Class
• CSS selectors
• ID
• Link Text
• Partial Link Text
• Tag Name
• XPath
Good locators are:
• unique
• descriptive
• unlikely to change
That rules a few of these out
Start with IDs and Classes

16. Locator Strategies
• Class
• CSS selectors
• ID
• Link Text
• Partial Link Text
• Tag Name
• XPath
Good locators are:
• unique
• descriptive
• unlikely to change
That rules a few of these out
Start with IDs and Classes
Use CSS or XPath (with care)

17. Which is better
CSS or XPath?

18. CSS vs. XPath
Benchmarks
http://se.tips/se-benchmarks

24. A Locator Rubric
(Each locator gets a grade)
Item Letter Grade E.g.,
Dynamic locators D-
User account specific
or tied to page render
Tied to page layout D
XPath: / / /
CSS: > > >, etc.
Text on the page C Link text, page copy
Reasonable traversal B
Parent to child w/in an
element node
Using semantic name B+
Input labels
(name='username')
Semantic ID A
Unique, descriptive,
unlikely to change
Non-unique locator? -2 full letter grades

25. So…

26. What’s your testing GPA?
Topic Weight
Tests 20%
Page Objects 30%
Locators 50%

27. Available in Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and C#
25% OFF until Friday at midnight (Eastern)
https://seleniumguidebook.com