[ANNOUNCE] node-red-constrib-selenium-wd2 0.1.0

[simonr]

Hi all,

I have made a new set of nodes which support selenium-webdriver API. It was based on node-red-contrib-selenium-webdriver (which is not supported since several years) but it ended with a complete rewriting in Typescript, partially to refactor the code and also as a personal challenge.

All interaction nodes have two output a success output which is used when the action is successful (of course) and a failure output which is used when there is a soft failure (i.e. selenium was not able to do the action) which can allow to manage case like "I don't want to be able to click on this button". Except that "Failure" management is done in a standard way for other errors.

I made these nodes to support UI validation and non-regression test. I think node-red can be a great platform to allow non-expert team (i.e. people who are not dev) to write test cases in a more readable and easier way. It can be used as well to automate API calls (with other libraries) and check through UI the results allowing "end to end" validation.

There are my firsts nodes (and my first npm package), so please don't hesitate to share with me your piece of advice and feedback.

node-red-contrib-selenium-wd2

Ps : I'm French, so please forgive my english

[paulkeates]

Hi,

You might want to look at "node-red-contrib-wdio" and see if there are portions that overlap or could be combined / merged.

Cheers,
Paul

[simonr]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the remark, but their are not based on the same framework (even if they provide the same set of features).

• node-red-contrib-wdio is based on webdriverio library
• node-red-constrib-selenium-wd2 is based on selenium-webdriver

APIs are quite different but aim to provide the same type of feature. Same as the nodes we have developped .

I'll check a little bit deeper inside wdio to see if we could align or maybe provide unified nodes for both Selenium APIs. (The features seems to be more factorized on wdio).

Thanks

[paulkeates]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the feedback!

I lead a team of 10 test engineers who use Node-RED to write both UI automated tests (with WDIO) and API automated tests full-time. It works very well and we have replaced very expensive test automation tools with Node-RED. We also use Node-RED to replace some RPA tools as well.

One thing to be aware of with the original Selenium nodes - they were quite slow in updating the web page (application under test). WDIO nodes were about 10X faster - I think mostly due to slow selectors. You might want to keep that in mind as you work through releasing your nodes.

P.S. there is nothing wrong with your English - it is certainly better than my French!

Cheers,

Paul

[simonr]

Thanks Paul for your Feedback.
What you've shown about Selenium-Webdriver vs WDIO performance is very interesting. I'll try to bench both of them to check what explain the differences and check if it can be optimized in any way.

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to use Node-Red potential for RPA & UI/API test automation

Thanks again for your feedbacks,

Simon