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Selenium with SpecFlow

Your guide to running Selenium Webdriver tests with SpecFlow on BrowserStack.

Introduction

BrowserStack gives you instant access to our Selenium Grid of 2000+ real devices and desktop browsers. Running your Selenium tests with SpecFlow on BrowserStack is simple. This guide will help you:

  1. Run a sample Selenium Webdriver test with SpecFlow on BrowserStack
  2. Setup your SpecFlow test suite to be able to test URLs in your internal network
  3. Understand and configure the core capabilities in your Selenium test suite
  4. Speed up your SpecFlow test suite with parallel testing
  5. Use our REST API to update your tests

Note: All the code samples and files referred to in this guide can be found in our GitHub repo: specflow-browserstack

Prerequisites

Before you can start running your Selenium tests with SpecFlow:

  1. Ensure you have Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 or above installed and running on your machine
  2. Install SpecFlow using the NuGet Gallery

Integration with BrowserStack

Note: Running your SpecFlow tests on BrowserStack requires a username and an access key.

To understand how to integrate with BrowserStack, we will look at two things:

  1. A sample test case written in SpecFlow with C#
  2. Integration of this sample test case with BrowserStack

Sample Test Case

The sample SpecFlow test case below searches for the string "BrowserStack" on Google, and checks if the title of the resulting page is "BrowserStack - Google Search"

// Google Feature
Feature: Google

Scenario Outline: Can find search results
  Given I am on the google page for <profile> and <environment>
  When I search for "BrowserStack"
  Then I should see title "BrowserStack - Google Search"
  
  Examples:
    | profile | environment |
    | single    | chrome      |

Once we have defined the feature file, which contains the test case, we now need to create the step definition. The step definition for the SpecFlow test case shown above is:

// Google Steps
[Binding]
public class SingleSteps
{
  private IWebDriver _driver;
  readonly BrowserStackDriver _bsDriver;

  public SingleSteps()
  {
    _bsDriver = (BrowserStackDriver)ScenarioContext.Current["bsDriver"];
  }

  [Given(@"I am on the google page for (.*) and (.*)")]
  public void GivenIAmOnTheGooglePage(string profile, string environment)
  {
    _driver = _bsDriver.Init(profile, environment);
    _driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.google.com/ncr");
  }

  [When(@"I search for ""(.*)""")]
  public void WhenISearchFor(string keyword)
  {
    var q = _driver.FindElement(By.Name("q"));
    q.SendKeys(keyword);
    q.Submit();
  }

  [Then(@"I should see title ""(.*)""")]
  public void ThenIShouldSeeTitle(string title)
  {
    Thread.Sleep(5000);
    Assert.That(_driver.Title, Is.EqualTo(title));
  }
}

Now that we have created the feature file and the step definition, we are ready to integrate this SpecFlow test case into BrowserStack.

Integrating with BrowserStack

Now that we have created a feature file and step definitions, we can integrate our SpecFlow test case into BrowserStack. To start, we define two classes which contain methods to configure and create the connection with BrowserStack.

[Binding]
public sealed class BrowserStack
{
  private BrowserStackDriver bsDriver;
  private string[] tags;

  [BeforeScenario]
  public void BeforeScenario()
  {
    bsDriver = new BrowserStackDriver(ScenarioContext.Current);
    ScenarioContext.Current["bsDriver"] = bsDriver;
  }

  [AfterScenario]
  public void AfterScenario()
  {
    bsDriver.Cleanup();
  }
}

public class BrowserStackDriver
{
  private IWebDriver driver;
  private Local browserStackLocal;
  private string profile;
  private string environment;
  private ScenarioContext context;

  public BrowserStackDriver(ScenarioContext context)
  {
    this.context = context;
  }

  public IWebDriver Init(string profile, string environment)
  {
    NameValueCollection caps = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("capabilities/" + profile) as NameValueCollection;
    NameValueCollection settings = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("environments/" + environment) as NameValueCollection;

    DesiredCapabilities capability = new DesiredCapabilities();

    foreach (string key in caps.AllKeys)
    {
      capability.SetCapability(key, caps[key]);
    }

    foreach (string key in settings.AllKeys)
    {
      capability.SetCapability(key, settings[key]);
    }

    String username = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME");
    if (username == null)
    {
      username = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get("user");
    }

    String accesskey = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY");
    if (accesskey == null)
    {
      accesskey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get("key");
    }

    capability.SetCapability("browserstack.user", username);
    capability.SetCapability("browserstack.key", accesskey);

    File.AppendAllText("C:\\Users\\Admin\\Desktop\\sf.log", "Starting local");

    if (capability.GetCapability("browserstack.local") != null && capability.GetCapability("browserstack.local").ToString() == "true")
    {
      browserStackLocal = new Local();
      List<KeyValuePair<string, string>> bsLocalArgs = new List<KeyValuePair<string, string>>() {
        new KeyValuePair<string, string>("key", accesskey)
      };
      browserStackLocal.start(bsLocalArgs);
    }

    File.AppendAllText("C:\\Users\\Admin\\Desktop\\sf.log", "Starting driver");
    driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new Uri("http://" + ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get("server") + "/wd/hub/"), capability);
    return driver;
  }

  public void Cleanup()
  {
    driver.Quit();
    if (browserStackLocal != null)
    {
      browserStackLocal.stop();
    }
  }
}

We now need to create a .config file, which contains the BrowserStack Hub URL and credentials required to connect to the BrowserStack Selenium grid.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="specFlow" type="TechTalk.SpecFlow.Configuration.ConfigurationSectionHandler, TechTalk.SpecFlow" />

    <sectionGroup name="capabilities">
      <section name="single" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </sectionGroup>

    <sectionGroup name="environments">
      <section name="chrome" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </sectionGroup>
  </configSections>

  <appSettings>
    <add key="user" value="USERNAME" />
    <add key="key" value="ACCESS_KEY" />
    <add key="server" value="hub-cloud.browserstack.com" />
  </appSettings>

  <capabilities>
    <single>
      <add key="browserstack.debug" value="true" />
    </single>
  </capabilities>

  <environments>
    <chrome>
      <add key="browser" value="chrome" />
    </chrome>
  </environments>
  
<startup><supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5.1" /></startup><specFlow>
    <!-- For additional details on SpecFlow configuration options see http://go.specflow.org/doc-config -->
  <!-- For additional details on SpecFlow configuration options see http://go.specflow.org/doc-config --><unitTestProvider name="NUnit" /></specFlow></configuration>

We are now ready to run the test on BrowserStack, using the following command:

Build the solution in Visual Studio 2015 Update 2
Run test with fixture "single" from Test Explorer

Testing on Internal Networks

BrowserStack enables you to run your SpecFlow automated tests on your internal development environments, on localhost, and from behind a corporate firewall. This feature is called "Local Testing".

Local Testing establishes a secure connection between your machine and the BrowserStack cloud. Once you set up Local Testing, all URLs work out of the box, including HTTPS URLs and those behind a proxy or firewall.

Configuring your SpecFlow tests for Local Testing takes just three steps:

  1. Download and run the BrowserStackLocal binary:

    Install BrowserstackLocal using NuGet Gallery

  2. Now, you need to update your SpecFlow config file and set the browserstack.local capability to true:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="specFlow" type="TechTalk.SpecFlow.Configuration.ConfigurationSectionHandler, TechTalk.SpecFlow" />

    <sectionGroup name="capabilities">
      <section name="local" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </sectionGroup>

    <sectionGroup name="environments">
      <section name="chrome" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </sectionGroup>
  </configSections>

  <appSettings>
    <add key="user" value="BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME" />
    <add key="key" value="BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY" />
    <add key="server" value="hub-cloud.browserstack.com" />
  </appSettings>

  <capabilities>
    <local>
      <add key="browserstack.local" value="true" />
    </local>
  </capabilities>

  <environments>
    <chrome>
      <add key="browser" value="chrome" />
    </chrome>
  </environments>
  
<startup><supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5.1" /></startup><specFlow>
    <!-- For additional details on SpecFlow configuration options see http://go.specflow.org/doc-config -->
  <!-- For additional details on SpecFlow configuration options see http://go.specflow.org/doc-config --><unitTestProvider name="NUnit" /></specFlow></configuration>

    Here is a sample feature and steps file which using Local testing:

    // Local Feature
Feature: Local

Scenario Outline: Can check tunnel working
  Given I opened health check for <profile> and <environment>
  Then I should see "Up and running"

  Examples:
    | profile | environment |
    | local   | chrome      |

    // Local Steps
[Binding]
public class LocalSteps
{
  private IWebDriver _driver;
  readonly BrowserStackDriver _bsDriver;

  public LocalSteps()
  {
    _bsDriver = (BrowserStackDriver)ScenarioContext.Current["bsDriver"];
  }

  [Given(@"I opened health check for (.*) and (.*)")]
  public void GivenIOpenedHealthCheck(string profile, string environment)
  {
    _driver = _bsDriver.Init(profile, environment);
    _driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://bs-local.com:45691/check");
  }
      
  [Then(@"I should see ""(.*)""")]
  public void ThenIShouldSee(string body)
  {
    Assert.That(_driver.PageSource, Does.Contain(body));
  }
}

  3. You can now run your SpecFlow test using BrowserStack Local with the following command:

    Build the solution in Visual Studio 2015 Update 2
Run test with fixture "local" from Test Explorer

Configuring capabilities

To run your SpecFlow test suite on our Selenium grid, you have to configure a couple of capabilities so that your tests execute on a remote browser. BrowserStack supports the full complement of Selenium capabilities, and also has several advanced capabilities which give you full control over how you want to run your SpecFlow test suites.

The sections below detail the different capabilities and provide examples of how to use them.For a full reference of all the Selenium and custom capabilities we support, visit our Capabilities page.

Run tests on desktop browsers and real mobile devices

Using the drop-down menus, select a combination of operating system, browser, and screen resolution. To see the order of precedence for the capabilities, please read about parameter override rules here.

You can additionally run your SpecFlow tests on real Android and iOS devices in our datacenters.

Look for the icon to select a real device.

1. Select an OS
iOS
2. Select a browser
Windows XP
2. Select a device
iOS
3. Select a resolution
1024 x 768

Note: Testing on real devices requires the Automate Mobile plan

<environments>
  <bs>
    <add key="os" value="Windows" />
    <add key="os_version" value="7" />
    <add key="browser" value="IE" />
    <add key="browser_version" value="8.0" />
    <add key="resolution" value="1024x768" />
  </bs>
</environments>

Note: If browser_version capability is not set, the test will run on the latest version of the browser set by browser capability.

For a list of all supported devices, visit the Browsers and Devices page.

Builds and projects

Keep track of all your automated tests using the build and project capabilities. Group your tests into builds, and builds further into projects. 

<capabilities>
  <single>
    <add key="build" value="version1" />
    <add key="project" value="newintropage" />
  </single>
</capabilities>

Note: Allowed characters include uppercase and lowercase letters, digits, spaces, colons, periods, and underscores. Other characters, like hyphens or slashes are not allowed.

Self-signed certificates

To avoid invalid certificate errors while testing on BrowserStack Automate, set the acceptSslCerts capability in your test to true.

<capabilities>
  <single>
    <add key="acceptSslCerts" value="true" />
  </single>
</capabilities>

Enable and Disable Pop-ups

IE

To enable the popups in IE, use the browserstack.ie.enablePopups capability.

<capabilities>
  <single>
    <add key="browserstack.ie.enablePopups" value="true" />
  </single>
</capabilities>
Safari

To enable the popups in Safari, use the browserstack.safari.enablePopups capability.

<capabilities>
  <single>
    <add key="browserstack.safari.enablePopups" value="true" />
  </single>
</capabilities>

Debugging

BrowserStack provides a range of debugging tools to help you quickly identify and fix bugs you discover through your automated tests.

Text Logs

Text Logs are a comprehensive record of your test. They are used to identify all the steps executed in the test and troubleshoot errors for the failed step. Text Logs are accessible from the Automate dashboard or via our REST API.

Visual Logs

Visual Logs automatically capture the screenshots generated at every Selenium command run through your SpecFlow tests. Visual logs help with debugging the exact step and the page where failure occurred. They also help identify any layout or design related issues with your web pages on different browsers.

Visual Logs are disabled by default. In order to enable Visual Logs you will need to set browserstack.debug capability to 'true'.

<capabilities>
  <single>
    <add key="browserstack.debug" value="true" />
  </single>
</capabilities>
Video recording

Every test run on the BrowserStack Selenium grid is recorded exactly as it is executed on our remote machine. This feature is particularly helpful whenever a browser test fails. You can access videos from Automate Dashboard for each session. You can also download the videos from the Dashboard or retrieve a link to download the video using our REST API.

Note: Video recording increases test execution time slightly. You can disable this feature by setting the browserstack.video capability to false.

To disable video recording, add the following code snippet:

<capabilities>
  <single>
    <add key="browserstack.video" value="false" />
  </single>
</capabilities>
Console Logs

Console Logs capture the browser's console output at various steps of the test to troubleshoot javascript issues. You can retrieve Console Logs using our REST API. You will also be able to download logs from Automate Dashboard.

Console Logs are enabled with log level set to 'errors' by default. To set different log levels, you need to use the capability browserstack.console with values 'disable', 'errors', 'warnings', 'info' or 'verbose', as shown below:

<capabilities>
  <single>
    <addkey="browserstack.console" value="errors"/>
  </single>
</capabilities>
Network Logs

Network Logs capture the browser's performance data such as network traffic, latency, HTTP requests and responses in the HAR format. You can download network logs using the REST API or from the Automate Dashboard. You can visualize HAR files using the HAR Viewer.

Network Logs are disabled by default. To enable Network Logs use the capability browserstack.networkLogs with the value 'true', as shown below:

<capabilities>
  <single>
    <addkey="browserstack.networkLogs" value="true"/>
  </single>
</capabilities>

Speed up testing

The BrowserStack Selenium grid gives you the infrastructure you need to scale. Features like Parallel Testing and Queuing enable you to scale faster.

Parallel Testing

On BrowserStack, you can run multiple SpecFlow tests at the same time across various browser, device and OS combinations. This is “Parallel Testing”. Parallel Testing gives you the same benefits as running a multi-threaded application helps you reduce the run time of your test suite, resulting in faster build times and faster releases.

To run tests on multiple browsers in parallel with SpecFlow on BrowserStack, modify the config file as below:

// App.config
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="specFlow" type="TechTalk.SpecFlow.Configuration.ConfigurationSectionHandler, TechTalk.SpecFlow" />

    <sectionGroup name="capabilities">
      <section name="parallel" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </sectionGroup>

    <sectionGroup name="environments">
      <section name="chrome" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
      <section name="firefox" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
      <section name="safari" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
      <section name="ie" type="System.Configuration.AppSettingsSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </sectionGroup>
  </configSections>

  <appSettings>
    <add key="user" value="USERNAME" />
    <add key="key" value="ACCESS_KEY" />
    <add key="server" value="hub-cloud.browserstack.com" />
  </appSettings>

  <capabilities>
    <parallel>
      <add key="browserstack.debug" value="true" />
    </parallel>
  </capabilities>

  <environments>
    <chrome>
      <add key="browser" value="chrome" />
    </chrome>
    <firefox>
      <add key="browser" value="firefox" />
    </firefox>
    <safari>
      <add key="browser" value="safari" />
    </safari>
    <ie>
      <add key="browser" value="ie" />
    </ie>
  </environments>
  
<startup><supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5.1" /></startup><specFlow>
    <!-- For additional details on SpecFlow configuration options see http://go.specflow.org/doc-config -->
  <!-- For additional details on SpecFlow configuration options see http://go.specflow.org/doc-config --><unitTestProvider name="NUnit" /></specFlow></configuration>

// Add to AssemblyInfo.cs
[assembly: Parallelizable(ParallelScope.Fixtures)]

Capabilities for each environment can be customised as explained earlier.

Parallel test cases need to be written for running in parallel with SpecFlow.

// Google Feature for parallel run
Feature: Google

Scenario Outline: Can find search results
  Given I am on the google page for <profile> and <environment>
  When I search for "BrowserStack"
  Then I should see title "BrowserStack - Google Search"
  
  Examples:
    | profile | environment |
    | parallel  | chrome      |
    | parallel  | firefox     |
    | parallel  | safari      |
    | parallel  | ie          |

You can now run your tests in parallel on BrowserStack using the following command:

Build the solution in Visual Studio 2015 Update 2
Run tests with fixture "parallel" from Test Explorer

Note: Achieve your test coverage and build execution time goals by using our calculator to understand how many parallel sessions you need.

Queuing

With queuing, you can launch an additional number of parallel tests with different browser configurations that will be queued in a sequence. For instance, if you want to run 5 additional tests, apart from your subscribed limit of 2 parallel tests, BrowserStack will queue the additional 5 tests until one of the 2 initial tests finish, and a slot is available for execution. With queuing, you don't need to worry about managing your test pipeline - we automatically take care of scheduling and execution for you.

With this feature, accounts up to 5 parallel tests can queue 5 tests. Beyond 5 parallel tests, an equivalent number of tests will be queued.

REST API

BrowserStack provides a comprehensive REST API to access and update information about your tests. Shown below is a sample code snippet which allows you to mark your tests as pass or fail based on the assertions in your SpecFlow test cases.

namespace RestApi {
  class ChangeSessionStatus {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      string reqString = "{\"status\":\"completed\", \"reason\":\"\"}";

      byte[] requestData = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(reqString);
      Uri myUri = new Uri(string.Format("https://www.browserstack.com/automate/sessions/<session-id>.json"));
      WebRequest myWebRequest = HttpWebRequest.Create(myUri);
      HttpWebRequest myHttpWebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)myWebRequest;
      myWebRequest.ContentType = "application/json";
      myWebRequest.Method = "PUT";
      myWebRequest.ContentLength = requestData.Length;
      using (Stream st = myWebRequest.GetRequestStream())st.Write(requestData, 0, requestData.Length);

      NetworkCredential myNetworkCredential = new NetworkCredential("USERNAME", "ACCESS_KEY");
      CredentialCache myCredentialCache = new CredentialCache();
      myCredentialCache.Add(myUri, "Basic", myNetworkCredential);
      myHttpWebRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;
      myHttpWebRequest.Credentials = myCredentialCache;

      myWebRequest.GetResponse().Close();
    }
  }
}

A full reference of our REST API can be found here.

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