Write your first Selenium script
Once you have Selenium installed, you’re ready to write Selenium code.
Eight Basic Components
Everything Selenium does is send the browser commands to do something or send requests for information. Most of what you’ll do with Selenium is a combination of these basic commands
Click on the link to “View full example on GitHub” to see the code in context.
1. Start the session
For more details on starting a session read our documentation on driver sessions
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();driver = webdriver.Chrome() IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome driver = await new Builder().forBrowser(Browser.CHROME).build(); driver = ChromeDriver()2. Take action on browser
In this example we are navigating to a web page.
driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html") driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html') await driver.get('https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html'); driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html")3. Request browser information
There are a bunch of types of information about the browser you can request, including window handles, browser size / position, cookies, alerts, etc.
driver.getTitle();title = driver.title var title = driver.Title;driver.title let title = await driver.getTitle(); val title = driver.title4. Establish Waiting Strategy
Synchronizing the code with the current state of the browser is one of the biggest challenges with Selenium, and doing it well is an advanced topic.
Essentially you want to make sure that the element is on the page before you attempt to locate it and the element is in an interactable state before you attempt to interact with it.
An implicit wait is rarely the best solution, but it’s the easiest to demonstrate here, so we’ll use it as a placeholder.
Read more about Waiting strategies.
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofMillis(500));driver.implicitly_wait(0.5) driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitWait = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(500);driver.manage.timeouts.implicit_wait = 500 await driver.manage().setTimeouts({implicit: 500}); driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(Duration.ofMillis(500))5. Find an element
The majority of commands in most Selenium sessions are element related, and you can’t interact with one without first finding an element
WebElement textBox = driver.findElement(By.name("my-text"));
WebElement submitButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button"));text_box = driver.find_element(by=By.NAME, value="my-text")
submit_button = driver.find_element(by=By.CSS_SELECTOR, value="button") var textBox = driver.FindElement(By.Name("my-text"));
var submitButton = driver.FindElement(By.TagName("button"));text_box = driver.find_element(name: 'my-text')
submit_button = driver.find_element(tag_name: 'button') let textBox = await driver.findElement(By.name('my-text'));
let submitButton = await driver.findElement(By.css('button')); var textBox = driver.findElement(By.name("my-text"))
val submitButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button"))6. Take action on element
There are only a handful of actions to take on an element, but you will use them frequently.
textBox.sendKeys("Selenium");
submitButton.click();text_box.send_keys("Selenium")
submit_button.click() textBox.SendKeys("Selenium");
submitButton.Click();text_box.send_keys('Selenium')
submit_button.click await textBox.sendKeys('Selenium');
await submitButton.click(); textBox.sendKeys("Selenium")
submitButton.click()7. Request element information
Elements store a lot of information that can be requested.
message.getText();message = driver.find_element(by=By.ID, value="message") var value = message.Text;message.text let value = await message.getText(); val value = message.getText()8. End the session
This ends the driver process, which by default closes the browser as well. No more commands can be sent to this driver instance. See Quitting Sessions.
driver.quit();driver.quit() driver.Quit();driver.quit await driver.quit(); driver.quit()Running Selenium File
mvn exec:java -D"exec.mainClass"="dev.selenium.getting_started.FirstScript" -D"exec.classpathScope"=testpython first_script.pyruby example_script.rbnode example_script.spec.jsNext Steps
Most Selenium users execute many sessions and need to organize them to minimize duplication and keep the code more maintainable. Read on to learn about how to put this code into context for your use case with Using Selenium.
