Selenium - Environment Setup

Download and Install Java

We need to have JDK (Java Development Kit) installed in order to work with Selenium WebDriver/Selenium. Let us see how to download and install Java.

Step 1 − Navigate to the UR.

https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

Step 2 − Go to "Downloads" section and select "JDK Download".

Step 3 − Select "Accept License Agreement" radio button.

Step 4 − Select the appropriate installation. In this case, it is 'Windows 7-64' bit. Click the appropriate link and save the .exe file to your disk.

Step 5 − Run the downloaded exe file to launch the Installer wizard. Click 'Next' to continue.

Step 6 − Select the features and click 'Next'.

Step 7 − The installer is extracted and its progress is shown in the wizard.

Step 8 − The user can choose the install location and click 'Next'.

Step 9 − The installer installs the JDK and new files are copied across.

Step 10 − The Installer installs successfully and displays the same to the user.

Step 11 − To verify if the installation was successful, go to the command prompt and just type 'java' as a command. The output of the command is shown below. If the Java installation is unsuccessful or if it had NOT been installed, it would throw an "unknown command" error.

Download and Configure Eclipse

Step 1 − Navigate to the URL: https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and download the appropriate file based on your OS architecture.

Step 2 − Click the 'Download' button.

Step 3 − The download would be in a Zipped format. Unzip the contents.

Step 4 − Locate Eclipse.exe and double click on the file.

Step 5 − To configure the workspace, select the location where the development has to take place.

Step 6 − The Eclipse window opens as shown below.

Configure FireBug and FirePath

To work with Selenium RC or WebDriver, we need to locate elements based on their XPath or ID or name, etc. In order to locate an element, we need tools/plugins.

Step 1 − Navigate to the URL : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/ and download plugin.

Step 2 − The add-on installer is shown to the user and it is installed upon clicking the 'Install' button.

Step 3 − After installing, we can launch the plugin by navigating to "Web Developer" >> "Firebug".

Step 4 − FirePath, a plugin that works within Firebug, helps users to grab the 'XPath' of an element. Install FirePath by navigating to "https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firepath/"

Step 5 − The add-on installer is shown to the user and it is installed upon clicking the 'Install' button.

Step 6 − Now launch "Firebug" by navigating to "Tools" >> "Webdeveloper" >> "Firebug".

Example

Now let us understand how to use FireBug and FirePath with an example. For demonstration, we will use www.google.com and capture the properties of the text box of "google.com".

Step 1 − First click on the arrow icon as highlighted in the following screenshot and drag it to the object for which we would like to capture the properties. The HTML/DOM of the object would be displayed as shown below. We are able to capture the 'ID' of the input text box with which we can interact.

Step 2 − To fetch the XPath of the object, go to 'firepath' tab and perform the following steps.

Click the Spy icon.
Select the Control for which we would like to capture the XPath.
XPath of the selected control would be generated.

Configure Selenium RC

Now let us look at how to configure Selenium Remote control. We will understand how to develop scripts with Selenium RC in later chapters, however for now, we will understand just the configuration part of it.

Step 1 − Navigate to the Selenium downloads section http://www.seleniumhq.org/download/ and download Selenium Server by clicking on its version number as shown below.

Step 2 − After downloading, we need to start the Selenium Server. To do so, open command prompt and navigate to the folder where the downloaded JAR file is kept as shown below.

Step 3 − To start the server, use the command 'java -jar <<downloaded jar name >> and if java JDK is installed properly, you would get a success message as shown below. Now we can start writing Selenium RC scripts.

Configure Selenium WebDriver

Now let us look at how to configure Selenium WebDriver. We will understand how to develop scripts with Selenium WebDriver in later chapters, however for now, we will understand just the configuration part of it.

Step 1 − Navigate to the selenium downloads section http://www.seleniumhq.org/download/ and download Selenium WebDriver by clicking on its version number as shown below.

Step 2 − The downloaded file is in Zipped format and one has to unzip the contents to map it to the project folder.

Step 3 − The Unzipped contents would be displayed as shown below. How to map it to the project folder and how to start scripting would be dealt in the webDriver chapter.

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