Using Selenium and WebDriver

From ChromeDriver - WebDriver for Chrome:

WebDriver is an open source tool for automated testing of web apps across many browsers. It provides capabilities for navigating to web pages, user input, JavaScript execution, and more. ChromeDriver is a standalone server which implements WebDriver’s wire protocol for Chromium. It is being developed by members of the Chromium and WebDriver teams.

Setting up Spectron

Spectron is the officially supported ChromeDriver testing framework for Electron. It is built on top of WebdriverIO and has helpers to access Electron APIs in your tests and bundles ChromeDriver.

$ npm install --save-dev spectron

// A simple test to verify a visible window is opened with a title
var Application = require('spectron').Application
var assert = require('assert')

var app = new Application({
  path: '/Applications/MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp'
})

app.start().then(function () {
  // Check if the window is visible
  return app.browserWindow.isVisible()
}).then(function (isVisible) {
  // Verify the window is visible
  assert.equal(isVisible, true)
}).then(function () {
  // Get the window's title
  return app.client.getTitle()
}).then(function (title) {
  // Verify the window's title
  assert.equal(title, 'My App')
}).catch(function (error) {
  // Log any failures
  console.error('Test failed', error.message)
}).then(function () {
  // Stop the application
  return app.stop()
})

Setting up with WebDriverJs

WebDriverJs provides a Node package for testing with web driver, we will use it as an example.

1. Start ChromeDriver

First you need to download the chromedriver binary, and run it:

$ npm install electron-chromedriver
$ ./node_modules/.bin/chromedriver
Starting ChromeDriver (v2.10.291558) on port 9515
Only local connections are allowed.

Remember the port number 9515, which will be used later

2. Install WebDriverJS

$ npm install selenium-webdriver

3. Connect to ChromeDriver

The usage of selenium-webdriver with Electron is basically the same with upstream, except that you have to manually specify how to connect chrome driver and where to find Electron’s binary:

const webdriver = require('selenium-webdriver')

const driver = new webdriver.Builder()
  // The "9515" is the port opened by chrome driver.
  .usingServer('http://localhost:9515')
  .withCapabilities({
    chromeOptions: {
      // Here is the path to your Electron binary.
      binary: '/Path-to-Your-App.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron'
    }
  })
  .forBrowser('electron')
  .build()

driver.get('http://www.google.com')
driver.findElement(webdriver.By.name('q')).sendKeys('webdriver')
driver.findElement(webdriver.By.name('btnG')).click()
driver.wait(() => {
  return driver.getTitle().then((title) => {
    return title === 'webdriver - Google Search'
  })
}, 1000)

driver.quit()

Setting up with WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO provides a Node package for testing with web driver.

1. Start ChromeDriver

First you need to download the chromedriver binary, and run it:

$ npm install electron-chromedriver
$ ./node_modules/.bin/chromedriver --url-base=wd/hub --port=9515
Starting ChromeDriver (v2.10.291558) on port 9515
Only local connections are allowed.

Remember the port number 9515, which will be used later

2. Install WebdriverIO

$ npm install webdriverio

3. Connect to chrome driver

const webdriverio = require('webdriverio')
const options = {
  host: 'localhost', // Use localhost as chrome driver server
  port: 9515,        // "9515" is the port opened by chrome driver.
  desiredCapabilities: {
    browserName: 'chrome',
    chromeOptions: {
      binary: '/Path-to-Your-App/electron', // Path to your Electron binary.
      args: [/* cli arguments */]           // Optional, perhaps 'app=' + /path/to/your/app/
    }
  }
}

let client = webdriverio.remote(options)

client
  .init()
  .url('http://google.com')
  .setValue('#q', 'webdriverio')
  .click('#btnG')
  .getTitle().then((title) => {
    console.log('Title was: ' + title)
  })
  .end()

Workflow

To test your application without rebuilding Electron, simply place your app source into Electron’s resource directory.

Alternatively, pass an argument to run with your electron binary that points to your app’s folder. This eliminates the need to copy-paste your app into Electron’s resource directory.