How Do I Record User Flows With Selenium?

Getting started with Selenium IDE

1. Find the latest version of Selenium IDE and click + Add to Chrome or Firefox
     • Firefox
     • Chrome
   

   

2. Restart the browser and go to Selenium IDE to open the recording window.
   
   
3. You’ll be prompted to ‘Record a new test in new project’ or ‘Open an existing project’. Choose the applicable action.
4. Navigate to ‘Base URL’ and input the URL you’d like to record via Selenium IDE for the user flow to record and monitor.
   
   
5. In the browser window, start interacting with the page, clicking and stepping through the user flow to record and monitor. Notice that Selenium IDE records actions as steps.
   
   
6. When we’re done with the steps we’d like to record and monitor we can click the red circle icon on the Selenium IDE recorder to stop the recording.
        
                                          

Reading The Selenium IDE Recording Results

The Selenium IDE records steps and displays the steps in a table with three columns: Command, Target, and Value.

Command: represents the action
Target: represents the selector type (ID, CSS, XPath) and the specific selector that Selenium can use to target the element that corresponds to the action
Value: represents any value that should be entered into a field

For example, if we want to record entering the value “Zoompf” into a search field with the ID “search-input” then the row in the Selenium IDE recorder for this action would look like:

Playing Back The Selenium IDE Script & Troubleshooting

In the Selenium IDE recorder window, click the ‘Play’ triangle to ‘Play current test case.’ We may want to adjust the speed settings from ‘Fast’ to ‘Slow.’

This will allow you to quickly know if the user flow is capturing what you want. A common issue you’ll want to check for is that the Target is selecting static elements versus dynamic. If a step fails in playback it will be come up in red. We recommend checking the step’s target first and seeing if different XPath, id, or CSS element fixes the step.

If after doing the above has issues and Selenium IDE is unable to play back all of the steps without any errors (even after checking the target) we may need to edit steps in the IDE or troubleshoot further before creating a check in Rigor. There is some helpful information about debugging Selenium IDE cases here. Still stuck? Email support@rigor.com for help.

Saving Selenium Script and Importing into Rigor

If Selenium IDE is able to replay all of the steps without any errors (steps will be highlighted in green) then we can save & import.

1. Save the Selenium IDE test case (command + S) or by clicking the disk icon in the upper right-hand corner.
   
   
2. Checks > Real Browser + New >  From File
   
   
3. Select your file to import > Import Rigor will automatically create the steps that correspond with the Selenium test and remove any steps that are duplicated by our system.
   
   

Note: Please make sure to hit the test button at the end all steps, this will be another way to make sure this will run within the Rigor ecosystem. After all steps run without issue, we recommend that you save and manually trigger a live run as well. For further troubleshooting steps please refer here!