Hiya champions! Welcome back to another fun filled article which tells you why property files exist in the first place!! This particular concept is not just limited to Selenium WebDriver projects. It can be used in basically any Java project that involves hardcoded stuff.
Imagine you have more than a couple hundred automated test cases and in each test case, you hard-coded the URL of the application under test. So far, so good. But, what if another release pops up changing the application URL to a different version and the same test cases are to be executed again (regression testing)? You might think, “That’s easy! I just have to run the build file one more time. Just one click and I will be back playing Super Mario!”. Did you miss the URL part? How much more pain it is, to manually go to every single test case and edit the hard-coded URL just to make it work? Oh no!!!
Don’t fret! We have a solution. Property files come to our rescue! To make your test cases all the more dynamic, make sure you do not put any hard-coded values into them. Abstract out such values to a property file so that whenever they change, you can edit them in just one place and the test cases work perfectly all over again.
Without further ado, let us understand how to implement this in our project, in just three small steps,
Step 1:
Right-click on the project -> New -> Package. Make sure the “Source Folder” displays the name of your project and let the package name be “resources”.
Now right-click on the “resources” package -> New -> File. Let the File Name be “config.properties”.
Step 2:
Now it is time to abstract out all those hardcoded values from the test cases.
In “config.properties” file, have all the required properties as key-value pairs. This will help us to refer each property in the test case with its key, which will be demonstrated in a minute. Any changes to the values can be made in this one particular file and they will magically get reflected in all the test cases where the reference is made.
Step 3:
In order to use these properties in the test case,
Properties props = new Properties();
– Declare a “props” variable of type “Properties”. This creates an empty property list with no default values.
This will require an import from java.util package, import java.util.Properties;
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("resources//config.properties"); –
A connection is created to read all the properties from “config.properties” file under “resources” package.
This also requires an import from the java.io package, import java.io.FileInputStream;
props.load(fis); – Reads all the properties from the input byte stream with the opened connection, “fis”.
props.getProperty("baseURL"); – To get the value of a particular property, use “getProperty” method. The corresponding key is to be mentioned within the double-quotes as an argument to the getProperty() method. It searches for the property with the specified key in the property list. If the key is not found, null is returned.
Overall picture
Let us see a test case implementing the concept covered so far,
Scenario
- Open Firefox browser.
- Read the firefox driver path and base URL from the property file.
- Navigate to the demo site
- Locate ‘Tricycle’ checkbox by name and print the corresponding message to the console
- Check if the ‘Tricycle’ checkbox is enabled and print corresponding message to console
- Based on the current selection status of ‘Van’ and ‘SUV’ checkboxes, check or uncheck and print the status before and after performing click() action
- Locate ‘Sedan’ checkbox using XPath
- Toggle between select and unselect states using two iterations
- Locate ‘Magazines’ radio button using cssSelector
- Check if it is selected by default
- If yes, then print the corresponding message to console and if no, select the radio button
Verify Eclipse IDE console output screen and JUnit pane for success result
JUnit code for this scenario is,
Config.properties
#Properties as key-value pairs
baseUrl=https://chandanachaitanya.github.io/selenium-practice-site/
logoPath=E:\\Selenium\\Logo.png
[email protected]
pdfReportPath=E:\\Selenium\\junit.pdf
firefoxPath=E:\\Softwares\\Selenium\\geckodriver-v0.10.0-win64\\geckodriver.exe
chromePath=browser-drivers\\chromedriver.exe
IEPath=browser-drivers\\IEDriverServer.exeRadioBtns_Checkboxes.java
package com.blog.junitTests;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
public class RadioBtns_Checkboxes {
// Declaring variables
private WebDriver driver;
private String baseUrl;
Properties props;
@Before
public void setUp() throws Exception {
// Creates an empty property list
props = new Properties();
// A connection is created to config.properties file
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("resources//config.properties");
// Reads the properties from the input byte stream
props.load(fis);
// Get the firefox driver path from property file
String firefoxPath = props.getProperty("firefoxPath");
// Assign the URL to be invoked to a String variable
baseUrl = props.getProperty("baseUrl");
// Mention the property where required
System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", firefoxPath);
// Create a new instance for the class FirefoxDriver
// that implements WebDriver interface
driver = new FirefoxDriver();
// Implicit wait for 5 seconds
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
@Test
public void testPageTitle() throws Exception {
// Open baseUrl in Firefox browser window
driver.get(baseUrl);
// Locate 'Tricycle' checkbox using name
WebElement tricycleCheckbox = driver.findElement(By.name("vehicle2"));
// Check if tricyle is displayed
System.out.println("Is tricycle displayed? "+ tricycleCheckbox.isDisplayed());
// Check if tricyle is enabled to select
if (tricycleCheckbox.isEnabled()) {
// Click if enabled
tricycleCheckbox.click();
} else {
// Print message to console if disabled
System.out.println("Unable to select 'Tricycle' checkbox as it is disabled.");
}
//Get all checkbox elements in a list
List<WebElement> list = driver.findElements(By
.cssSelector("input[type='checkbox']"));
// Loops through all checkboxe elements
for (int i = 0; i < list.size(); i++) {
// Checking if the checkbox is a 'Van' or 'SUV'
if ((list.get(i).getAttribute("value").trim()
.equalsIgnoreCase("van"))
|| (list.get(i).getAttribute("value").trim()
.equalsIgnoreCase("suv"))) {
// Print selection status to console
System.out.println("BEFORE: Is "
+ list.get(i).getAttribute("value") + " selected? "
+ list.get(i).isSelected());
// Check if the checkbox is selected
if (!(list.get(i).isSelected())) {
// Click the checkbox
list.get(i).click();
System.out.println("AFTER: Is "
+ list.get(i).getAttribute("value") + " selected? "
+ list.get(i).isSelected());
} else {
// Uncheck the checkbox
list.get(i).click();
System.out.println("AFTER: Is "
+ list.get(i).getAttribute("value") + " selected? "
+ list.get(i).isSelected());
}
System.out.println("Next...");
}
}
// Locate 'Sedan' checkbox using xPath
WebElement sedanCheckbox = driver.findElement(By
.xpath("//input[@name='vehicle5']"));
System.out.println("Trying to select and de-select Sedan checkbox...");
for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++) {
// Click the checkbox
sedanCheckbox.click();
// Print current status to console
System.out.println("Selection status of 'Sedan' checkbox: "
+ sedanCheckbox.isSelected());
}
// Locate 'Magazines' radio button using cssSelector
WebElement magazinesRadioBtn = driver.findElement(By
.cssSelector("input[value='Magazines']"));
// Check if radio button is selected by default
if (magazinesRadioBtn.isSelected()) {
// Print message to console
System.out.println("Magazines radio button is selected by default");
} else {
// Click the radio button
magazinesRadioBtn.click();
}
} //End of @Test
@After
public void tearDown() throws Exception {
// Close the Firefox browser
driver.close();
}
}Output
Clear comments are provided for each line of code, making it self-explanatory. Upon executing the test case, eclipse IDE console window output is as follows,
Property files make an automated tester’s life, a dream come true. Thus proved! Time has come to experiment with today’s concept. Be sure to put on your safety helmets so that you don’t bump into any exceptions! And one more thing before I go, all code files are available in the GitHub repo. Check them out!
See you soon! Have a great day!