QTP Best Practices

HP Quick Test Professional is a test automation tool, also known as QTP. It is used to automate functional, regression & smoke test cases. It is a very popular tool and works on MS windows O/S, supports development technologies like Active X, Delphi, Java, .Net, Oracle, People Soft, web, Web services etc. This article discusses about best practices while doing automation using QTP.

1.     Don’t use msgbox function, this function pauses the script execution & requires user intervention. This defeats the objective of unattended script execution. To store or display error message and execution log use QTP inbuilt Reporter object.
2.       Follow coding guidelines like comments, variable & function name declaration.
3.       Use option explicit to enforce variable declaration. Always define variables at the top of script & function file
4.       Neither hard code test data nor read value using custom function like Inputbox. Use parameterization to enhance reusability of code. QTP provides inbuilt support for Microsoft excel files, store test data in excel file, import excel sheet in QTP DataTable, read value using “DataTable.value” function
5.       In large tests, define reusable codes as function in external .vbs file. It consumes less memory than QTP Action.
6.       QTP is a hardware hungry application, machine should be hardware rich.
7.       Use synchronization (like exist, sync etc.) to mitigate timing issue between script & Application under test. Don’t use wait (10) statement. Don’t increase global synchronization time out value; it slows down QTP execution speed.  Ideal solution is implement synchronization at object level not at global level.
8.       Create reusable function instead of reusable action; minimize number of actions in a test. Ideally, a test should not contain more than few actions. An action takes more time to load and run. Its limited use improves execution speed.
9.       Be tactful in using QTP features like Descriptive Programming or Object Repository or mixed approach. Each approach has its own merit & demerit. Try to use mix of both.
10. .   Don’t use inbuilt feature like “Save still image capture to results” and “Save movie to results”. These options decrease QTP run time performance. If required, use VB Script code to take screenshot of script failure.
11.     User relative paths while calling library file, reusable action, data files. It makes script portable and easy to manage.
12. .    Don’t overuse recovery scenario, recovery scenario slow down script execution time
13. .   Do not load un-necessary Add-ins. When QTP starts, it shows list of add-in available, select only required add-in. This will improve performance while learning objects and during run sessions.
14. .    Run your tests in "Fast mode. From the Run pane in the Options dialog box, select the Fast option. This enables QuickTest, run test faster.
15.   .  Hide Active Screen. If you are not using the Active Screen while editing your test, hide the Active Screen while editing your test to improve editing response time.
16.    Save the test results report to a temporary folder to overwrite the results from the previous run session every time you run a test. 

Selenium WebDriver Configuration Maven/Eclipse/Java

1. Create a folder [POMFOLDER] to contain your Selenium project files, within this folder create a file [pom.xml] file & Paste following code in it.

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">

4.0.0

MySel20Proj

MySel20Proj

1.0

org.seleniumhq.selenium

selenium-java

2.21.0

com.opera

operadriver

com.opera

operadriver

0.13

                                 
                

                 

2. Type “Download Eclipse” on google.co.in or go to URL - http://www.eclipse.org/ downloads/ & download Eclipse Classic 3.7.1. Unzip eclipse.zip file. Create a shortcut of “eclipse.exe”, right click on “Shortcut to eclipse.exe” icon & click on properties. In Target field append value [ -vm "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_02\bin\javaw" -vmargs -Xms256m -Xmx768m -XX:PermSize=256M -XX:MaxPermSize=512M ].
3. Download [jdk1.7.0_02] & install it.
4. Download [apache-maven-3.0.4-bin.zip] & unzip it. Open Readme.txt and follow the steps to install maven.
5. Go to Environment Variables [My Computer -> Properties -> Advance -> Environment Variables -> System Variable, update/create following variables -

                JAVA_HOME = C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25 ‘path of JDK

                PATH=C:\SeleniumProject\apache-maven-3.0.4\bin;%PATH% ‘path of                               Maven Folder

                CLASSPATH= %JAVA_HOME%\lib ‘Path of JDK Library folder

                M2_HOME = C:\SeleniumProject\apache-maven-3.0.4 ‘Path of Maven

6. Open Command prompt (Start -> Run -> CMD), type mvn clean install. It takes 5-10 minutes to install, check for [build successful] message at the end of deployment.

     7.   Go the folder where you had created pom.xml file (Refer Step 1) & type mvn ec             lipse:eclipse -DdownloadSources=true  -DdownloadJavadocs=true.  It 

           takes 5-10 minutes to install, check for [build successful] message at the end of 

           deployment. 

8. Open Eclipse by clicking on [Shortcut to eclipse.exe], Go to [File -> Import -> General -> Existing Projects into Workspace], click on [Next] button, Click on [Browse] button & select folder [POMFOLDER] (refer step 1).
9. Under [Eclipse -> Project Explorer] tab Maven project [MySel20Proj] is displayed.
10. Go to [Help -> Install New Software] & Enter URL - http://download.eclipse.org/technology/m2e/releases & click on [Next -> Finish] button, Eclipse prompts for restart, restart it.
11. Create a [Source Folder] (Right click on MySel20Proj, go to New & click on Source Folder)
12. Create a Class File (Right click on Source Folder, go to New & click on Class). New Java Class wizard get opened, enter class name, select checkbox for public static void main (String[] args) & click on Finish button.
13. You are ready to write first selenium program, paste following code within public static void main function –

                                       WebDriverdriver = new FirefoxDriver();

                                       driver.get("http://www.google.com");

14. Click on Crtl+F11, Firefox browser gets opened & URL www.google.com is displayed.

Selenium WebDriver :- What are Drivers for Firefox, IE, Chrome, Opera, Safari

List of Driver for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari browser are as follows -

Browser	Name of Driver Server	Remarks
HTMLUnit	(none)	Driver Server is not required
Firefox	(none)	Driver Server is not required
Internet Explorer	Internet Explorer Driver Server	Available in 32 and 64-bit versions
Chrome	ChromeDriver
Opera	OperaDriver
PhantomJS	GhostDriver	It is another headless browser just like HTMLUnit.
Safari	SafariDriver

Selenium WebDriver : - How to capture screenshot

#SeleniumWebDriver  #TakeScreenshot #TheBuddhaTree

The Problem

When we do nightly test execution, we need historical evidence to analyze & debug script failure. Sometime, it can be challenging to track down the issue that caused a failure using failure message along with stack trace. Especially when you run the test again and it passes.

A Solution

A simple way to gain insight into your test failures is to capture screenshots of AUT at the moment of failure and add the screenshots into test execution result. 

How to Implement using Selenium

Selenium WebDriver provides the TakesScreenshot interface for capturing a screenshot of a web page. This helps in test runs, showing exactly what happened when an exception or error occurred during execution, and so on.

TakesScreenshot interface provides the getScreenshotAs() method to capture a screenshot of the page displayed in the driver instance.  Example code is as follows –

import java.io.File;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;

import org.openqa.selenium.OutputType;

import org.openqa.selenium.TakesScreenshot;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;

import org.testng.annotations.Test;

public class TakeScreenshotOfApplication {

                WebDriver driver;

    @Test

       public void compareTitle() {

              driver = new FirefoxDriver();

              driver.get("http://google.co.in");

            // compare title & take screenshot of application if it fails

       if (driver.getTitle().contains("facebook")) {

                 System.out.println("Title matched!!");

       } else {

                 System.out.println("Title did not match");

                 takeScreenshotMethod();

            }

        }

        private void takeScreenshotMethod() {

             // code to take screen shot of browser

            File scrFile = ((TakesScreenshot) driver).getScreenshotAs(OutputType.FILE);

             // file name where image to be saved

             String screenshotpath = "C:\\google.png";

               try {

                       // save image to drive

                        FileUtils.copyFile(scrFile, new File(screenshotpath));

               } catch (IOException e) {

                       e.printStackTrace();

              }

          }

}

Expected Behavior

1. Load the URL
2. Take Screenshot
3. Save Screenshot Image to local drive

Happy Learning

}

Selenium : Read Excel file using JExcel API

Code to read  value from Excel file using selenium WebDriver & Java is as follows -

inputWorkbook = new File("C:\\Controller.xls"); //specify excel file path

    Workbook w;

               

    try {

               

            try {

                        w = Workbook.getWorkbook(inputWorkbook);

                        sheet = w.getSheet("Sheet1"); //Worksheet name

                        } catch (IOException e) {

                                                                       

                                    error("Reading Master Sheet :-" +e);

                        }

                 

                        suite = new String[sheet.getRows()][sheet.getColumns()];

              

                        for (int j = 0; j < sheet.getColumns(); j++){

                                   

                                    for (int i = 0; i < sheet.getRows(); i++){

                     

                                                Cell cell = sheet.getCell(j, i);

                     

                                                if (cell.getContents()!= null){

                         

                                                            suite[i][j]=cell.getContents();

                                                }

                   

                                    }

                 

                        }

              

Note – Suite[][] is two dimensional array which stores value read from Excel Worksheet.