Selenium IDE is a standalone 3rd party tool for creating Selenium test cases. These test cases can be imported as script files into Synthetic Monitoring and used within Browser Checks to collect performance metrics for the scenario. In some cases, you will need to make changes to your Selenium IDE script before it can be used within ASM as a Scenario. This article explains how ASM handles Selenium IDE scripts so you can easily understand how to convert your scripts into Scenarios.

Supported Selenium IDE Commands

Use the following table as a reference when determining whether a certain Selenium IDE command is compatible with your ASM Scenario.

Usage Assertion Modes

In order to assert a command within Selenium IDE, you can use the assert, verify, or waitFor commands; the assert command will stop the Selenium IDE script if the expected condition is not met, while the verify command will log an error message but not stop the script. ASM scenarios, in contrast, treat the assert and verify commands in the same way - if the expected condition is not met, both commands will result in a failure of the scenario.

By contrast, the behavior of the waitFor command is the same within Selenium IDE and ASM Scenarios. Within both tools, the waitFor command will wait for a specified element and will result in a script failure if the element is not found within the specified timeframe.

Custom ASM Commands

ASM supports several commands which are not utilized in native Selenium IDE: insertPageBreak, takeScreenshot, and getDictionary.

insertPageBreak

ASM scenarios support a custom command called “insertPageBreak”. This command creates a new Page Break that separates different pages (which typically consist of multiple URL calls) from each other. The command expects one argument, the name/title of the page break, which will be shown on the Result Details page in ASM. Page breaks can be entered manually into scripts or automatically generated when recording web sessions. For example, If the login portion of a web page sequence takes place over two or three HTML pages, the Page break could define the set of HTML pages to be all part of a single group before the next logical page navigation, another Page Break, which could be “Check my account.” Typically, insertPageBreak is only necessary if you need to set a custom title or if requests which are triggered as a result of executing multiple different commands all end up as part of the same step, and you wish to split these requests into multiple steps.

takeScreenshot

The command takeScreenshot takes a screenshot that will be visible in the Check Details. The command will insert an additional screenshot onto the page in addition to whatever screenshots have been added in the Edit Check settings.

getDictionary

The concept of “Dictionaries” within ASM is a repository to store user names, passwords, internal access URLs, and other sensitive data. Dictionaries can be used to reuse data in multiple environments or to hide access information during monitoring. This allows users to utilize passwords in scenarios without displaying them in cleartext or reuse a single URL in several different scenarios without manually coding it.

The Apica custom Selenium scripting command getDictionary allows users to access a user-defined dictionary from inside a check scenario script. The getDictionary fetches the entire Dictionary (with all key/value pairs) and stores it locally for when the script executes. 

Using the getDictionary Command

Step 1: Create the Dictionary

1. Create/Add a Dictionary using our API POST command

2. Name the Dictionary Key that will be used to access this dictionary. Some examples:

   1. "dictionary_key": "ExampleApicaKey","dictionary" {Name:value pairs}

   2. "dictionary_key": "ApicaKey","dictionary" {Name:value pairs}

   3. You will also provide string-pair values in the form of “targetstring1”: “targetvalue1” that will form the Keys that access the values needed.

      • e.g., “firstname”: “Doug”

      • e.g., “lastname”: “Smith”

      • e.g., “cardnumber”: “1234-1234-1234-1234”

      • e.g., “expdate”: “12/25”

3. You must also provide a Description

   1. e.g. "description": "Test Dictionary"

4. In this example, the POST command is

   1. POST scenarios/proxysniffer/dictionaries

5. The POST body for one of the examples above would be

{
  "dictionary_key": "DougApicaKey",   
  "dictionary": {
     “firstname”: “Doug”,
     "lastname”: “Smith”,
     "cardnumber”: “1234-1234-1234-1234"
  },
"description": "Test Dictionary"
}

Step 2: Retrieve the Dictionary

Once the above dictionary has been defined, the Selenium scripting command getDictionary allows access to this information from inside a check scenario script. The getDictionary command fetches the entire Dictionary (with all key/value pairs) and stores it locally for when the script executes. It uses the Apica Dictionaries GET API to get these dictionary values. The GET call will be in the form of

https://api-wpm.apicasystem.com/v3/scenarios/proxysniffer/dictionaries/{dictionary_key}?auth_ticket={auth ticket value}

The getDictionary command then turns these key values into ASM variable names for use in the ASM script.

Using the getDictionary Command within a Selenium Scenario

When the getDictionary command fetches pre-defined variables from a dictionary, it expects two arguments:

1. Target: User’s API Token or Authorization Ticket

2. Value: The dictionary URL https://api-wpm.apicasystem.com/v3/scenarios/proxysniffer/dictionaries/{dictionary_key}

The following screenshot provides an example of the getDictionary command within a Selenium script:

This screenshot provides an example of the API GET command for the dictionary “DougApicaKey”.
This screenshot provides another example of the API GET command for the dictionary “ApicaKey”. Note how each dictionary has different defined key-value pairs.
Selenium Example 1: The Dictionary Key "DougApicaKey" has 3 key values (excluding the sample value) that are used in the scenario.
Selenium Example 2: The Dictionary Key "Apicakey" has 2 key values (excluding the sampleKey value) that are used in this scenario. In this case, the username and password values, from the dictionary will be used in the Selenium scenario; these values will not be hard-coded into the script.

Encrypting Selenium Variables

In addition to storing and fetching sensitive data from a Dictionary, ASM also offers the option to encrypt sensitive Scenario data. Any data stored in an encrypted variable is only accessible when the script is actually being run. To add an encrypted variable to your scenarios, add a variable using the Selenium "store" command, and start the name of the sensitive variable with "encryptapica." It is possible to use that stored variable anywhere in the scenario:

Step	Screenshot
Step 1: Edit a Check which contains a Scenario and click the Debug Scenario icon.
Step 2: Identify the sensitive information to be encrypted.
Step 3: Store the value as an encrypted value by adding a new variable which will hold the encrypted value. At the top of the scenario, add a new step with the “Store” Command in the dropdown box. Add a string which begins with “encryptapica” to the “Value” field. In the example, the value is “encryptapicapassword”. When the “encryptapica” value is added, a warning icon will appear to the right of the step. Once a target is added, the triangle icon will be replaced by a green lock icon.
Step 4: Enter the original Target value. Double-click in the target field. A new dialog box, “Update Encrypted Value” will appear to enter in your plaintext value. Click the Update & Encrypt to begin the encryption. Make sure a backup of the value exists elsewhere; Apica does not have the ability to retrieve this value!
Step 5: After the encryption has been completed, the green lock will appear, and the words “[ENCRYPTED BY APICA]” will be in the Target field.
Step 6: In the step where the password originally appeared, replace the plaintext password with the stored variable name specified earlier. In this case, in step 25, the variable ‘encryptapicapassword’ will be entered as $(variable_name) or $(encryptapicapassword).
Step 7: Test the scenario to ensure it passes the encrypted values to the intended application and click “Save scenario”.

The below video tutorial provides a visual demonstration of the process of encrypting and adding a scenario.

Masking Selenium Variables

Command values can be masked using an Apica-specific prefix when they contain sensitive information. This prevents the value from being displayed in results. Assume a scenario contains the following commands:

It is possible to mask the value secretPa$$word in the Check Result page by adding the Store command to store the password as a variable with the prefix maskapica and using that variable in the actual command which uses the password. The scenario will contain the following commands after the value secretPa$$word is masked:

The command’s target will be masked on the Check Results page when the check is run:

Prefixes

Synthetic Monitoring supports custom security prefixes for use in select scenario values where information may need more security.

‘apica’ to store information

Store a result with “apica”

Synthetic Monitoring will store the command result for later display when the "apica" prefix is used in a command value.

Display

The command value is shown in Details in the Details Result Scenario in the Value column.

Example

This example will store the ServerID cookie value and show it as apicaServerID Extracted Value.

This prefix will work with any command that starts with “store."

Limitations of Selenium IDE within ASM Scenarios

Key Codes

When using sendKeys in Selenium IDE, the key codes ${KEY_ENTER}, ${KEY_SHIFT}, and ${KEY_LEFT} are not valid commands within Selenium IDE.

JavaScript Execution

WebDriver’s JavascriptExecutor will wrap all JS and evaluate it as an anonymous expression.

Impact on JavaScript execution

This means that you need to use the “return” keyword:

browserbot.getCurrentWindow().document.title

becomes

return document.title;

The same is true when evaluation expressions using storeEval or assertEval:

Selenium IDE

\{\{${stored_var} > 0\}\}

WebDriver

\{\{return ${stored_var} > 0\}\}

Note that there are multiple commands that will result in javascript evaluation: gotoIf, assertEval, getEval, storeEval

Key Strokes

If you need to simulate a keypress input event, such as pressing the enter key, you must use keyPress or keyPressAndWait (if the keystroke triggers a new page load), with the ASCII as an argument.

Overview

Example: Press enter key and wait for new page load

Response Times

Agents running Microsoft Windows may handle very short report times incorrectly.

Waterfall graph

Agents running Microsoft Windows sometimes report 0ms for URL calls with very quick response times (0-20ms).

Return Required

For Selenium commmands that execute javascript snippets, the command expects a returned value

Return Command In Scripts

The following commands result in javascript evaluation/expects a javascript snippet as argument, which must include the 'return' keyword:

GotoIf

RunScript

RunScriptAndWait

GetEval

StoreEval

StoreExpression

Type & sendKeys

Even though the "type" command should work in most cases, we strongly recommend that you use "sendKeys" instead.

Key Strokes

If you need to simulate a key press input event, such as pressing the enter key, you must use keyPress or keyPressAndWait (if the key stroke triggers a new page load), with
the ascii code as argument:

Example: Press enter key and wait for new page load
keyPressAndWait | id=gh-ac | \13

Script Variables

It is currently not possible to change the value of a variable from within a javascript.

##

This Selenium IDE code will change the value of $counter:

However the following example won't affect the value of $counter