Selenium RC with Python in 30 Seconds

Selenium is a suite of tools to automate web app testing across many platforms. It has various pieces (Core, RC, IDE, etc), and I struggled trying to figure out how everything fits together and works. At the end of the day, all I wanted to do was use Selenium from my Python code to drive a browser session.

Selenium ships with full tests and some good sample code, but the driver examples all contain test frameworks/runners (JUnit, unittest, etc). All I wanted was a simple way to integrate with Python. To do this, the piece I need is Selenium RC (which includes Selenium Core).

So here is the beginners' 30-second guide to getting the Python client driver working with Selenium-RC:

1. Install Python (and add it to your path)
2. Install Java (and add it to your path)
3. Download Selenium RC
4. Unzip Selenium RC and search for 'selenium-server.jar' and 'selenium.py'
5. Copy them to a directory and run 'java -jar selenium-server.jar' to start the server
6. Start writing your Python driver code! (import selenium)

So what's actually going on when you run a driver script?

Selenium-server is the core program, which also contains an integrated web server. You send HTTP requests to the server to instruct it how to drive your browser. The 'selenium.py' module is just a wrapper around 'httplib' that provides a Python API for interacting with the Selenium-server. You need to import the 'selenium.py' module from your script and then you are ready to go.

now let's test it out and see if it works. Try the following Python script. It should open Firefox and navigate to www.google.com.

#!/usr/bin/env python

from selenium import selenium

sel = selenium('localhost', 4444, '*firefox', 'http://www.google.com/')
sel.start()
sel.open('/')
sel.wait_for_page_to_load(10000)
sel.stop()

Python - HTTP Request Profiler

Here is a script in Python that profiles an HTTP request to a web server.

to use, give it a url:

> python http_profiler.py www.goldb.org

output:

0.12454 request sent
0.24967 response received
0.49155 data transferred (9589 bytes)

It uses Python's httplib to send a GET request to the URL and adds some timing instrumentation between each step of the request/response.

Python Code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Corey Goldberg - September 2009


import httplib
import sys
import time



if len(sys.argv) != 2:
    print 'usage:\nhttp_profiler.py \n(do not include http://)'
    sys.exit(1)

# get host and path names from url
location = sys.argv[1]
if '/' in location:
    parts = location.split('/')
    host = parts[0]
    path = '/' + '/'.join(parts[1:])
else:
    host = location
    path = '/'

# select most accurate timer based on platform
if sys.platform.startswith('win'):
    default_timer = time.clock
else:
    default_timer = time.time

# profiled http request
conn = httplib.HTTPConnection(host)
start = default_timer()  
conn.request('GET', path)
request_time = default_timer()
resp = conn.getresponse()
response_time = default_timer()
size = len(resp.read())
conn.close()     
transfer_time = default_timer()

# output
print '%.5f request sent' % (request_time - start)
print '%.5f response received' % (response_time - start)
print '%.5f content transferred (%i bytes)' % ((transfer_time - start), size)

Web Page Profilers for Windows/Internet Explorer

A "Web Page Profiler" is a tool that is used to measure and analyze web page performance. It is usually implemented as a browser plugin or add-on, and lets you see performance of web pages/objects as they are transferred/loaded/executed/rendered.

For Firefox, choosing a profiler is a no-brainer. Firebug is an excellent developer tool that includes profiling capabilities.

• Firebug

Unfortunately, Firebug does not work with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. There is Firebug Lite, which "can" work with IE, but it is limited in functionality and requires you to install some server side code (which is not always feasible).

• Firebug Lite

There are some web profilers specifically for IE, but none of them live up to the functionality or stability of Firebug. Some to look at are:

• AOL Pagetest
• MySpace Performance Tracker

... also, Internet Explorer 8 has built-in "Developer Tools" (press F12) that include a basic performance profiler for JavaScript execution.

Does anyone know of any other profilers/performance tools that work with IE? Thoughts?