Tutorial¶

Before starting, make sure Splinter is installed

This tutorial provides a simple example, teaching step by step how to:

search for splinter - python acceptance testing for web applications' in google.com, and
find if splinter official website is listed among the search results

Create a Browser instance¶

Import the Browser class and instantiate it:

from splinter import Browser

browser = Browser()

Note: if you don’t provide any argument to the Browser function, firefox will be used (Browser function documentation).

Visit a website¶

Navigate to any website using the browser.visit() method.

Let’s go to Google:

from splinter import Browser

browser = Browser()

browser.visit('http://google.com')

Find an element¶

After a page is loaded, you can perform actions, such as clicking, filling text input, checking radio and checkboxes.

To do that, first you must find the correct element:

from splinter import Browser

browser = Browser()

browser.visit('http://google.com')
input_element = browser.find_by_name('q')

Input text¶

Let’s fill Google’s search element with splinter - python acceptance testing for web applications:

from splinter import Browser


browser = Browser()

browser.visit('http://google.com')
input_element = browser.find_by_name('q')
input_element.fill('splinter - python acceptance testing for web applications')

Click a button¶

Tell Splinter which button should be pressed. A button - or any other element - can be identified using its css, xpath, id, tag or name.

In order to find Google’s search button, do:

from splinter import Browser


browser = Browser()

browser.visit('http://google.com')
input_element = browser.find_by_name('q')
input_element.fill('splinter - python acceptance testing for web applications')
# There are two elements with name btnK - only the second is visible
button_element = browser.find_by_name('btnK')[1]

Note The name btnK was found by inspecting Google’s search page source code.

With the button identified, we can then click it:

from splinter import Browser


browser = Browser()

browser.visit('http://google.com')
input_element = browser.find_by_name('q')
input_element.fill('splinter - python acceptance testing for web applications')
# There are two elements with name btnK - only the second is visible
button_element = browser.find_by_name('btnK')[1]
button_element.click()

Note: Both steps presented above could be joined in a single line, such as:

from splinter import Browser


browser = Browser()

browser.visit('http://google.com')
browser.find_by_name('q').fill('splinter - python acceptance testing for web applications')
browser.find_by_name('btnK')[1].click()

Check for results¶

After pressing the button, you can check if Splinter official website is among the search responses. This can be done like this:

from splinter import Browser


browser = Browser()

browser.visit('http://google.com')
input_element = browser.find_by_name('q')
input_element.fill('splinter - python acceptance testing for web applications')
# There are two elements with name btnK - only the second is visible
button_element = browser.find_by_name('btnK')[1]
button_element.click()

if browser.is_text_present('splinter.readthedocs.io'):
    print("Yes, found it! :)")
else:
    print("No, didn't find it :(")

In this case, we are just printing something. You might use assertions, if you’re writing tests.

Close the browser¶

When you’ve finished testing, close your browser using browser.quit:

from splinter import Browser


browser = Browser()

browser.visit('http://google.com')
input_element = browser.find_by_name('q')
input_element.fill('splinter - python acceptance testing for web applications')
# There are two elements with name btnK - only the second is visible
button_element = browser.find_by_name('btnK')[1]
button_element.click()

if browser.is_text_present('splinter.readthedocs.io'):
    print("Yes, the official website was found!")
else:
    print("No, it wasn't found... We need to improve our SEO techniques")

browser.quit()