Setup & First Test — Selenium WebDriver Automation | Sabaoon Academy

Selenium WebDriver is the industry-standard library for controlling web browsers programmatically. You write Python (or Java, C#, etc.) code that drives a real browser — clicking buttons, filling forms, reading text — exactly as a user would.

Installation

pip install selenium

From Selenium 4.6+, you no longer need to manually download ChromeDriver. Selenium Manager handles it automatically.

Your First Test

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

driver = webdriver.Chrome()          # opens Chrome
driver.get("https://example.com")   # navigates to URL

heading = driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, "h1")
print(heading.text)                  # "Example Domain"

driver.quit()                        # always close the browser

Browser Options

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")   # run without a visible window
options.add_argument("--no-sandbox")
options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,1080")

driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

Headless mode is essential for CI pipelines where there is no display.

The WebDriver Lifecycle

WebDriver lifecycle

Ctrl+Enter

HTML

CSS

var steps = [
{ icon: '🚀', label: 'webdriver.Chrome() — Launch browser session' },
{ icon: '🌐', label: 'driver.get(url) — Navigate to page' },
{ icon: '🔍', label: 'find_element() — Locate element on DOM' },
{ icon: '🖱️', label: '.click() / .send_keys() — Interact with element' },
{ icon: '✅', label: 'assert — Verify expected result' },
{ icon: '🔒', label: 'driver.quit() — Close browser, end session' },
];

var container = document.getElementById('steps');
steps.forEach(function(s, i) {
var div = document.createElement('div');
div.className = 'step';
div.id = 'step' + i;
div.innerHTML = '<span class="icon">' + s.icon + '</span><span>' + s.label + '</span>';
container.appendChild(div);
});

var current = -1;
var timer = null;

document.getElementById('runBtn').onclick = function() {
if (timer) return;
current = 0;
animate();
};

document.getElementById('resetBtn').onclick = function() {
clearTimeout(timer); timer = null; current = -1;
steps.forEach(function(_, i) {
  document.getElementById('step' + i).className = 'step';
});
};

function animate() {
if (current >= steps.length) { timer = null; return; }
if (current > 0) document.getElementById('step' + (current-1)).className = 'step done';
document.getElementById('step' + current).className = 'step active';
current++;
timer = setTimeout(animate, 700);
}

console.log('WebDriver lifecycle: ' + steps.length + ' steps');

Preview

Running with pytest

# test_homepage.py
import pytest
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

@pytest.fixture
def driver():
    d = webdriver.Chrome()
    yield d
    d.quit()          # teardown runs after every test

def test_title(driver):
    driver.get("https://example.com")
    assert "Example" in driver.title

def test_heading(driver):
    driver.get("https://example.com")
    h1 = driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, "h1")
    assert h1.text == "Example Domain"

Run with:

pytest test_homepage.py -v