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Selenium Testing - Automate

Run Tests in Parallel

Run Python tests in parallel to achieve faster builds

On BrowserStack, you can run multiple Selenium Webdriver tests at the same time across various browser, device and OS combinations. This is called Parallel Testing. Parallel Testing gives you the same benefits as running a multi-threaded application.

With Parallel Testing, you can run the same test on different browser/device combinations i.e. cross-browser testing, or run different tests on the same or different browser/device combinations. Parallel Testing will help you reduce the run time of your test suite, resulting in faster build times and faster releases.

You can start testing in parallel using one of the popular test frameworks which work with Python and Selenium or refer the following section. We have provided getting started guides on some of the popular frameworks below:

Run tests in parallel without a framework

You can achieve parallel testing in multiple ways even if you are not using one of the popular test frameworks which has feature for enabling parallel testing. We show three such ways below but this is not an exhaustive list:

Using a multi-threaded program

The following sample script shows a multi-threaded Python program. These are the salient points of the script:

  • The same script is run across 5 different browser, device and OS combinations viz. Chrome on Win10, Edge on Win10, Safari on MacOS, and also on Android and iOS real mobile devices.
  • The Thread function in the for loop takes run_session function and each set of capability from the caps array as an argument.
  • The Thread function then executes the same script on each set of capability as parallel sessions.
from threading import Thread
from time import sleep
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.desired_capabilities import DesiredCapabilities
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

# This array 'caps' defines the capabilities browser, device and OS combinations where the test will run
caps=[{
      'os_version': '10',
      'os': 'Windows',
      'browser': 'chrome',
      'browser_version': 'latest',
      'name': 'Parallel Test1', # test name
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build' # Your tests will be organized within this build
      },
      {
      'os_version': '10',
      'os': 'Windows',
      'browser': 'Edge',
      'browser_version': 'latest',
      'name': 'Parallel Test2', # test name
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build'
      },
      {
      'os_version': 'Big Sur',
      'os': 'OS X',
      'browser': 'Safari',
      'browser_version': 'latest',
      'name': 'Parallel Test3', # test name
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build'
      },
      {
      'device': 'Samsung Galaxy S20',
      'os_browser': '11.0',
      'real_mobile': 'true',
      'name': 'Parallel Test4',
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build'
      },
      {
      'device': 'iPhone 12 Pro',
      'os_browser': '14',
      'real_mobile': 'true',
      'name': 'Parallel Test5',
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build'
}]	 
#run_session function searches for 'BrowserStack' on google.com
def run_session(desired_cap):
  driver = webdriver.Remote(
      command_executor='https://YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_ACCESS_KEY@hub-cloud.browserstack.com/wd/hub',
      desired_capabilities=desired_cap)
  driver.get("https://www.google.com")
  if not "Google" in driver.title:
      raise Exception("Unable to load google page!")
  elem = driver.find_element_by_name("q")
  elem.send_keys("BrowserStack")
  elem.submit()
  try:
      WebDriverWait(driver, 5).until(EC.title_contains("BrowserStack"))
      driver.execute_script('browserstack_executor: {"action": "setSessionStatus", "arguments": {"status":"passed", "reason": "Title matched!"}}')
  except TimeoutException:
      driver.execute_script('browserstack_executor: {"action": "setSessionStatus", "arguments": {"status":"failed", "reason": "Title not matched"}}')
  print(driver.title)
  driver.quit()
#The Thread function takes run_session function and each set of capability from the caps array as an argument to run each session in parallel
for cap in caps:
  Thread(target=run_session, args=(cap,)).start()

Using a multi-threaded program and using ThreadPoolExecutor to manage threads

In case of the above implementation, the for loop calls the run_session function and all the threads are dispatched at the same time. You can also manage the dispatching by applying additional conditions on the loop but, in that case, you would have to manually keep track of which thread has completed its execution and depending on that, you will be required to spawn new threads keeping in mind you do not exceed the limit of parallel tests that is supported by your BrowserStack account.

You can choose to not manage the threads manually and use the Python ThreadPool to do the same for you.

Suppose you have two parallel account and you have 20 tests to be run. You can pass the capability for 20 sessions in the caps array and pass 2 as the value to max_workers which represents the number of threads in threadpool. This will create two threads and execute the 20 sessions on each of the thread as and when each session completes execution.

from threading import Thread
from time import sleep
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.desired_capabilities import DesiredCapabilities
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

#Your script will execute on each of the browser, device and OS combinations
caps=[{
      'os_version': '10',
      'os': 'Windows',
      'browser': 'chrome',
      'browser_version': 'latest',
      'name': 'Parallel Test1', # test name
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build' # Your tests will be organized within this build
      },
      {
      'os_version': '10',
      'os': 'Windows',
      'browser': 'Edge',
      'browser_version': 'latest',
      'name': 'Parallel Test2', # test name
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build'
      },
      {
      'os_version': 'Big Sur',
      'os': 'OS X',
      'browser': 'Safari',
      'browser_version': 'latest',
      'name': 'Parallel Test3', # test name
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build'
      },
      {
      'device': 'Samsung Galaxy S20',
      'os_browser': '11.0',
      'real_mobile': 'true',
      'name': 'Parallel Test4',
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build'
      },
      {
      'device': 'iPhone 12 Pro',
      'os_browser': '14',
      'real_mobile': 'true',
      'name': 'Parallel Test5',
      'build': 'BStack-[Python] Sample Build'
}]	 

#run_session function searches for 'BrowserStack' on google.com
def run_session(desired_cap):
  driver = webdriver.Remote(
      command_executor='https://YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_ACCESS_KEY@hub-cloud.browserstack.com/wd/hub',
      desired_capabilities=desired_cap)
  driver.get("https://www.google.com")
  if not "Google" in driver.title:
      raise Exception("Unable to load google page!")
  elem = driver.find_element_by_name("q")
  elem.send_keys("BrowserStack")
  elem.submit()
  try:
      WebDriverWait(driver, 5).until(EC.title_contains("BrowserStack"))
      driver.execute_script('browserstack_executor: {"action": "setSessionStatus", "arguments": {"status":"passed", "reason": "Title matched!"}}')
  except TimeoutException:
      driver.execute_script('browserstack_executor: {"action": "setSessionStatus", "arguments": {"status":"failed", "reason": "Title not matched"}}')
  print(driver.title)
  driver.quit()

#The `ThreadPoolExecutor` function takes `max_workers` as an argument which represents the number of threads in threadpool and execute multiple sessions on each of the thread as and when each session completes execution.
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=2) as executor:
	executor.map(run_session, caps)

Using a shell script

If you have multiple test scripts in separate files that you want to execute in parallel, then you can do so using a simple shell script as shown below:

shell_script.sh 
python <test-script-1>.py &
python <test-script-2>.py &
python <test-script-3>.py &
# and so on...

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