Selenium RC timing issues

Even the best Selenium test will fall victim to timing issues which will cause tests to fail some what randomly.

This class attempts to isolate the test from timing issues by performing an automatic retry.

public static class SeleniumRetry
 {
  public static void Invoke<TArg>(Action<TArg> action, TArg arg)
  {
   Invoke(() => action.Invoke(arg));
  }
  
  public static void Invoke<TArg1, TArg2>(Action<TArg1, TArg2> action2, TArg1 arg1, TArg2 arg2)
  {
   Invoke(() => action2.Invoke(arg1, arg2));    
  }
  
  public static void Invoke(Action action)
  {
   var attempt = 0;
   const int maxAttempts = 5;
   while (true)
   {
    try
    {
     action.Invoke();
     break;
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
     Console.WriteLine(e.Message);

     if (++attempt > maxAttempts)
      throw;

     Thread.Sleep(500);
    }
   }
  }
 }

Using the class is simple:
This scenario shows how to automate a dynamically loaded login form that is created when the PopupLogon link is clicked.

SeleniumRetry.Invoke(Browser.Click, "PopupLogon");

SeleniumRetry.Invoke(Browser.Type, "input_email", "fake@email.com");
SeleniumRetry.Invoke(Browser.Type, "password", "12345");

//First click selects the button, second performs action.
SeleniumRetry.Invoke(Browser.Click, "submitBtn");
SeleniumRetry.Invoke(Browser.Click, "submitBtn");

Automatically start and stop SeleniumRC with NUnit

You can use NUnit and SeleniumRC to run automated functional tests of your website. This is a simple class that starts selenium at the beginning of a unit test suite and shuts it down when done.

using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Net;
using NUnit.Framework;

[SetUpFixture]
public class SeleniumRcSetup
{
private readonly Process SeleniumRC = new Process();
[SetUp]
public void StartSelniumRc()
{
const string pathRelativeToProjBinDebug = @"path to your selenium installation";
SeleniumRC.StartInfo.FileName = "java";
SeleniumRC.StartInfo.Arguments = string.Format("-jar {0}selenium-server.jar", pathRelativeToProjBinDebug);
SeleniumRC.Start();
}
[TearDown]
public void StopSeleniumRc()
{
var r = WebRequest.Create("http://localhost:4444/selenium-server/driver/?cmd=shutDown");
r.GetResponse();
SeleniumRC.WaitForExit(5000);
SeleniumRC.Close();
}
}

Using XmlSerializer without rendering document declaration or namespace

Using xmlSerializer to serialize an object will by default add the xml namespace and document declaration. <strong>Example</strong>:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?>
<node xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" uID="12345">
...
</node>

But if all you want is to write out the xml fragment like:
<node uid="12345">
...
</node>

You need to configure the serializer before you use it. The following code will not render the document declaration or namespace.

public void SerializeWithNoDeclarationNoNamespace<T>(TextWriter writer, T theObject)
{
var settings = new XmlWriterSettings
{
Indent = true,
IndentChars = " ",
NewLineHandling = NewLineHandling.Replace,
NewLineChars = Environment.NewLine,
OmitXmlDeclaration = true
};

using (var xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(writer, settings))
{
var xmlnsEmpty = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();
xmlnsEmpty.Add("", "");

new XmlSerializer(typeof(T)).Serialize(xmlWriter, theObject, xmlnsEmpty);
}

writer.WriteLine("");
}