Selenium IDE Tutorial: Overview, Features, & Benefits

Before diving into the tool, let’s first answer the question ‘what is the Selenium IDE?’  Technically, it’s an integrated development environment, in simple terms, however, it’s an open-source record and playback tool for the web.  The tool is accessible via an extension in your web browser (you’ll need to add the extension yourself - currently the IDE extension supports both Chrome and Firefox).  The Selenium IDE works by simply recording your actions as you navigate a web application (or web page) and turns them into scripts (a collection of commands and arguments).  The scripts are recorded using a proprietary language called ‘Selenese’ but can be exported to WebDriver code using C# NUnit, Java JUnit, JavaScript Mocha, Ruby RSpec, or Python Pytest.  Once a session has been recorded, users can easily rerun the test, manipulate test commands, and debug test runs using the IDE. 

There are several Selenium IDE tutorials available (both text and video), on how to use the tool, so I won’t get into the details of how to use the IDE here. I will, however, point out the major features of the Selenium IDE that you should know about and why I think the tool deserves more attention as well as…acclaim.

The Command-line Runner - also referred to as the Selenium Side Runner.  As mentioned above, one of the pitfalls of the early Selenium IDE was no support for cross-browser testing and no support for parallelization.  This has all been solved with the advent of the Command-line Runner where you can now run tests on any browser, in parallel, and on a Grid (without needing to write any code!).  To achieve this, users must install the runner as well as the associated browser drivers for local test runs.  Currently, Firefox, Chrome, Edge, IE, and Safari are supported and the Selenium IDE has great documentation on how to configure your environment.

Another major limitation of the earlier version of the Selenium IDE was the very flaky element identification process and how brittle it was.  Previously the IDE would use one element locator - either XPath or CSS and simply wait for the element.  Now the Selenium IDE records multiple locators for each element it interacts with.  If one locator fails during playback, the others will be tried until one is successful.   For proof of this concept, I recorded a basic test where I verified text as one of my test steps.  You can see the IDE captured multiple XPath elements for my target, on top of the original CSS target:

Control Flow, in my opinion, is one of the coolest additions to the IDE and one that filled a significant shortcoming to the tool.  With Control Flow, the Selenium IDE includes commands that enable you to add conditional logic and looping to your tests.  Now you can execute a command (or set of commands) only when certain conditions are met, or execute commands repeatedly based on pre-defined criteria.  This is such a critical aspect of functional testing and one that deserves renewed attention because now you can create smart tests with the IDE, you can test code paths previously unchecked.  Here is an example directly from the Selenium IDE documentation illustrating a loop where the ‘times’ command is used to specify the number of iterations:

With the Code Export feature, users can export a test or test suite to WebDriver code.  You can export to Java JUnit, JavaScript Mocha, Python Pytest, Ruby RSpec, C# NUnit, and C# xUnit.  The IDE export options include origin tracing code comments (details about the test steps), step description as a separate comment, and export for use on Selenium Grid.  For more complex scenarios or code-driven test automation, users can start by creating general scripts using the Selenium IDE for coverage and functionality and then advance as needed.  

In addition to this functionality, the IDE offers explicit wait commands that help when the built-in wait strategy of the IDE is insufficient.  Instead of simply waiting for an element, users can apply conditions like:

And...

With these types of features, I consider the Selenium IDE a low-code open-source test automation tool for web applications.  The IDE has increased its library of commands, especially concerning the Control Flow conditional logic commands; if, else if, else, times, do, repeat if, while, end.  This dramatically increases the number of functional tests that can be created.  Add the ability to run cross-browser tests in parallel using the Command-line Runner and you have a tool that is not only practical but scalable.  With added test resiliency, where target elements are identified more effectively, and support for the Selenium IDE project is active and current, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be using this tool if you are involved in the SDLC of a web application.  The audience for this tool is practically everyone; while there is no requirement for coding it is very helpful if users understand HTML and the DOM.  In any event, documentation for the Selenium IDE is very straightforward and easy to understand with lots of relevant examples.  The good news is there are plenty of reasons why you should be using the Selenium IDE, more reasons than not, and that deserves some acclaim.