# What's the point of using Selenium? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [March 11, 2008, 8:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604 "2008-03-11T20:46:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 8:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604/1 "2008-03-11T20:46:04Z")
Hello, I’m wondering why I should use Selenium if I am already testing my application using functional and integration tests? Don’t Selenium tests merely test the same functionality? Thanks, Ruben ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 8:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604/2 "2008-03-11T20:50:48Z")
Rails integration tests can’t test anything but the most basic HTML and full request cycles. They also cannot tell you if your site works on Firefox and not IE. Use Selenium to test things like: - Ajax calls - Effects - Workingness on multiple browsers - Site usability Jason On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 3:44 PM, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 10:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604/3 "2008-03-11T22:56:51Z")
On 11 Mar 2008, at 19:50, Jason R. wrote: > Rails integration tests can’t test anything but the most basic HTML > and full request cycles. They also cannot tell you if your site works > on Firefox and not IE. To elaborate on that, when you’re doing integration/functional tests there is no browser involved, therefore you cannot possibly test anything that happens in the browser. For example you can test that when you make a certain request some rjs is generated to update a certain div, but you can’t test that the div in question actually exist. You also cannot test any of your javascript. Fred ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 2:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604/4 "2008-03-12T02:38:47Z")
Jason R. wrote: > Rails integration tests can’t test anything but the most basic HTML > and full request cycles. They also cannot tell you if your site works > on Firefox and not IE. > > Use Selenium to test things like: > > - Ajax calls > - Effects > - Workingness on multiple browsers > - Site usability Isn’t testing thru a server and browser to slow for TDD? I would treat each failure as an opportunity to write a unit-level test - one that efficiently mocks the browser and server. I want an incremental test run to work in less than a few seconds, and I want an integration to take less than a minute. The hard, slow tests can run on a build server. – Phlip ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 8:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604/5 "2008-03-12T08:47:48Z")
On 12 Mar 2008, at 01:37, Phlip wrote: > > - Effects > > less than a > > minute. The hard, slow tests can run on a build server. That’s all well and good, but the fact is that if you want to test what the browser does, you need a browser. For example those tests are never going to tell you that you’ve got a typo in your javascript. Those tests are a lot slower, so you’re probably not testing everything, just some common interactions. Fred ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 10:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604/6 "2008-03-12T10:13:46Z")
I can’t understand the confusion regarding selenium tests. Maybe the people are not running heavy ajax sites but if you have any significant ajax functionality, it becomes obvious why selenium tests are essential. “assert\_select\_rjs” just isn’t going to cut it when you need to integration test the entire (list =\> new =\> create =\> list) process and its all ajax. ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 2:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604/7 "2008-03-12T14:57:27Z")
Frederick C. wrote: > > I would treat each failure as an opportunity to write a unit-level > > test - one > > that efficiently mocks the browser and server. I want an incremental > > test run to > > work in less than a few seconds, and I want an integration to take > > less than a > > minute. The hard, slow tests can run on a build server. > > That’s all well and good, but the fact is that if you want to test > what the browser does, you need a browser. You need more than one! > For example those tests are > never going to tell you that you’ve got a typo in your javascript. assert\_javascript works out of unit tests, by parsing the JavaScript. It can catch simply typos - and of course it should not attempt to evaluate that JS, or simulate a browser. Its job (like assert\_rjs) is to detect that your production code has inserted the correct replacement values into the correct fields. assert\_js\_insert\_html matches rjs.insert\_html, assert\_js\_hide matches rjs.hide, etc. – Phlip [http://assertxpath.rubyforge.org/](http://assertxpath.rubyforge.org/) ---
**Author:** ![casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@casper\_the\_ghost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/casper_the_ghost)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2008, 4:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/whats-the-point-of-using-selenium/131604/8 "2008-03-12T16:15:49Z")
On 12 Mar 2008, at 13:56, Phlip wrote: > > That’s all well and good, but the fact is that if you want to test > > what the browser does, you need a browser. > > You need more than one! Indeed. Things like selenium grid, jsunit will run your tests on multiple machines/browsers > fields. > assert\_js\_insert\_html matches rjs.insert\_html, assert\_js\_hide > matches rjs.hide, etc. Neato, hadn’t seen that before. It’s still not an end to end test though: it only tests a single interaction.