Selenium with Python Tutorial

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Selenium can be used with multiple languages like Java, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and so on. Selenium is used extensively for web automation testing. Selenium is an open-source and a portable automated software testing tool for testing web applications. It has capabilities to operate across different browsers and operating systems. Selenium is not just a single tool but a set of tools that helps testers to automate web-based applications more efficiently.

Setup Selenium with Python and Launch Browser

Step 1 − Download and install Python from the link − https://www.python.org/downloads/.

To get a more detailed view on how set up Python, refer to the link − Python Environment.

Once we have successfully installed Python, we can confirm its installation by running the command: python –version, from the command prompt. The output of the command executed would point to the Python version installed in the machine.

Step 2 − Install the Python code editor called the PyCharm from the link − https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/.

Using this editor, we can start working on a Python project to start our test automation. To get a more detailed view on how to set up PyCharm, refer to the link − PyCharm.

Step 3 − Run the command: pip install selenium from the command prompt. This is done to install the Selenium. To confirm the version of Selenium installed in the machine, run the command −

pip show selenium

The output of this command gave the below result −

Name: selenium
Version: 4.19.0
Summary: None
Home-page: https://www.selenium.dev
Author: None
Author-email: None
License: Apache 2.0.

Step 4 − Restart PyCharm once Step 3 has been completed.

Step 5 − Open PyCharm and create a New Project by navigating to the File menu.

Enter the project name and location within the Location field, and then click on the Create button.

Step 6 − From the right bottom corner of the PyCharm editor, select the option Interpreter Settings.

Select the option Python Interpreter from the left, then click on '+'.

Step 7 − Enter selenium in the package search box inside the Available Packages popup, then the search results appear along with the Description to the right. The Description contains information about the version of the Selenium package that shall be installed.

There is also an option to install a specific version of the Selenium package beside the Specify version field. Then click on the Install Package button. After successful installation, the message Package 'selenium' installed successfully should display.

Step 8 − Enter webdriver-manager in the package search box inside the Available Packages popup, and install it in the same way.

Exit out of the Available Packages popup.

Step 9 − Both the packages selenium, and webdriver-manager should reflect under the Package. Click on the OK button. Restart PyCharm.

Step 10 − Create the first test case, by right clicking on the Project folder. Here, we have given the project name as SeleniumPython. Then click on New and finally click on the Python File option.

Step 11 − Enter a filename, say Test1.py and select the option Python File, finally click on Enter.

The Test1.py should appear in the left under the SeleniumPython project folder.

Step 12 − Open the newly created Python file with the name Test1.py, and obtain the page title - Selenium Practice - Alerts of the below page.

Example

from selenium import webdriver

# create instance of webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()

# launch application
driver.get("https://www.tutorialspoint.com/selenium/practice/alerts.php")

# get page title
print("Page title is: " + driver.title)

# quitting browser
driver.quit

Output

Page title is: Selenium Practice - Alerts

Process finished with exit code 0

In the above example, we had launched an application and obtained its page title in the console with the message - Page title is: Selenium Practice - Alerts.

The output shows the message - Process with exit code 0 meaning that the above code executed successfully.

Identify Element and Check Its Functionality using Selenium Python

Once we navigate to a webpage, we have to interact with the web elements available on the page like clicking a link/button, entering text within an edit box, and so on to complete our automation test case.

For this, our first job is to identify the element. There are some locators available in Selenium for this purpose, they are id, class, class name, name, link text, partial link text, tagname, css, and xpath. These locators need to be used with the find_element() method.

For example, driver.find_element("classname", 'btn-primary') will locate the first web element with the given class name attribute value. In case there is no element with the matching value of the class name attribute, NoSuchElementException should be thrown.

Let us see the html code of the Click Me button highlighted in the below image −

<button type="button" class="btn btn-primary" 
   onclick="showDiv()">Click Me</button>

It has a class name attribute with value as btn-primary. Let us click on that Click Me button after which we would get the text You have done a dynamic click on the page.

Example

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

# create instance of webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()

# implicit wait of 15 seconds
driver.implicitly_wait(15)

# launch application
driver.get("https://www.tutorialspoint.com/selenium/practice/buttons.php")

# identify element with class name
button = driver.find_element(By.CLASS_NAME, 'btn-primary')

# click on button
button.click()

# identify element with id
txt = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'welcomeDiv')

# get text
print("Text obtained is: " + txt.text)

# quitting browser
driver.quit

Output

Text obtained is: You have done a dynamic click

Process finished with exit code 0

The output shows the message - Process with exit code 0 meaning that the above code executed successfully. Also, we obtained the text after clicking the Click Me button with the message in the console- Text is: You have done a dynamic click.

This concludes our comprehensive take on the tutorial on Selenium - Python Tutorial. We’ve started with describing how to set up Selenium with Python and launch a browser, and how to identify an element and check its functionality using Selenium Python.

This equips you with in-depth knowledge of the Selenium - Python Tutorial. It is wise to keep practicing what you’ve learned and exploring others relevant to Selenium to deepen your understanding and expand your horizons.