On August 14, 2019, I teamed up with SmartBear to deliver a one-hour webinar about Web UI testing with Python! It was an honor to work with Nicholas Brown, Digital Marketing Manager for CrossBrowserTesting at SmartBear Software, to make this webinar happen.

The Webinar

In the webinar, I showed how to build a basic Web UI test automation solution using Python, pytest, and Selenium WebDriver. The tutorial covered automating one test, a simple DuckDuckGo search, from inception to automation. It also showed how to use CrossBrowserTesting to scale the solution so that it can run tests on any browser, any platform, and any version in the cloud as a service!

The example test project for the webinar is hosted in Github here: https://github.com/AndyLPK247/smartbear-hands-on-ui-testing-python

I encourage you to clone the Github repository and try to run the example test on your own! Make sure to get a CrossBrowserTesting trial license so you can try different browsers. You can also try to write new tests of your own. All instructions are in the README. Have fun with it!

The Q&A

After the tutorial, we took questions from the audience. Here are answers to the top questions:

How can we automate UI interactions for CAPTCHA?

CAPTCHA is a feature many websites use to determine whether or not a user is human. Most CAPTCHAs require the user to read obscured text from an image, but there are other variations. By their very nature, CAPTCHAs are designed to thwart UI automation.

When someone asked this question during the webinar, I didn’t have an answer, so I did some research afterwards. Unfortunately, it looks like there’s no easy solution. The best workarounds involve driving apps through their APIs to avoid CAPTCHAs. I also saw some services that offer to solve CAPTCHAs.

Are there any standard Page Object Pattern implementations in Python?

Not really. Mozilla maintains the PyPOM project, but I personally haven’t used it. I like to keep my page objects pretty simple, as shown in the tutorial. I also recommend the Screenplay Pattern, which handles concerns better as test automation solutions grow larger. I’m actually working on a Pythonic implementation of the Screenplay Pattern that I hope to release soon!

How can I run Python tests that use Selenium WebDriver and pytest from Jenkins?

Any major Continuous Integration tool like Jenkins can easily run Web UI tests in any major language. First, make sure the nodes are properly configured to run the tests – they’ll need Python with the appropriate packages. If you plan to use local browsers, make sure the nodes have the browsers and WebDriver executables properly installed. If you plan to use remote browsers (like with CrossBrowserTesting), make sure your CI environment can call out to the remote service. Test jobs can simply call pytest from the command line to launch the tests. I also recommend the “JUnit” pytest option to generate a JUnit-style XML test report because most CI tools require that format for displaying and tracking test results.

How can I combine API and database testing with Web UI testing?

One way to handle API and database testing is to write integration tests separate from Web UI tests. You can still use pytest, but you’d use a library like requests for APIs and SQLAlchemy for databases.

Another approach is to write “hybrid” tests that use APIs and database calls to help Web UI testing. Browsers are notoriously slow compared to direct back-end calls. For example, database calls could pre-populate data so that, upon login, the website already displays stuff to test. Hybrid tests can make tests much faster and much safer.

How can we test mobile apps and browsers using Python?

Even though our tutorial covered desktop-based browser UI interactions, the strategy for testing mobile apps and browsers is the same. Mobile tests need Appium, which is like a special version of WebDriver for mobile features. The Page Object Pattern (or Screenplay Pattern) still applies. CrossBrowserTesting provides mobile platforms, too!