Sahi-Web Automation and Testing Tool

Sahi–Web Automation and
Testing Tool: A White Paper
By
Mahesh Kurapati-Test Engineer
Vineela Sukhavasi-Test Engineer
Zen Quality Assurance Pvt. Ltd.

Contents
1. Abstract.................................................................................................. 01
2. Introduction............................................................................................ 01
3. Related work........................................................................................... 02
i) AJAX loading cannot be handled by selenium commands............................ 02
ii) Working with XPath is brittle and complex............................................... 03
iii) Selenium doesn’t provide inbuilt reporting functionality............................. 04
iv) May not run the same script in multiple browsers without any modification. 06
v) Record and playback is limited to Firefox only.......................................... 06
4. How Sahi works?...................................................................................... 07
5. Features of sahi........................................................................................07
6. Conclusion.............................................................................................. 08
References

1
1. Abstract
Web testing is the process of testing the applications hosted on the web in
which the application interfaces and functionalities are tested. Testing the
application before going to live will resolve many issues. Generally, more than
80% of the verification process are repetitive, with testers performing the same
verification steps manually from release to release.
Manual testing is a time consuming process but cannot be overlooked
because each time a software doesn’t perform well according to the
specifications. Test automation tests the application using special software. The
primary objective of test automation is to reduce repetitive manual tasks. There
are many commercial tools and open source frameworks available for automated
testing of web applications.
This paper introduces the new automation tool named Sahi and also shows
the comparison with Selenium. Both the mentioned tools are used to automate
web applications and the comparison shows the better choice of automation tool.
2. Introduction
Sahi is an automation and testing tool
for web applications. It is available in both
open-source and proprietary versions. The
open-source version includes record and
playback on all browsers, HTML reports, suites
and batch run and parallel playback, etc. Pro
version includes some of the enhanced
features like test distribution and report
customization. While considering the technical
details of Sahi, it runs as a proxy server and
the proxy settings are configured to point to a
Sahi’s proxy and then injects JavaScript
event handlers into web pages.
Fig. 1.1 Sahi Logo

2
Selenium is testing framework used to
automate the web applications and has several
components like Selenium IDE, Selenium
Remote control, Selenium WebDriver and
Seleniumgrid, etc.. Each one of these
components has their own specialtiess, out of
this Selenium RC considered to be depreciated
one and its successor is WebDriver.
Every tool has its own limitations, this
paper will discuss about Sahi and how it can
overcome the challenges faced with Selenium.
3. Related work
The objective of research is to find the tool which can overcome the
challenges faced with Selenium. Performance of any tool depends on overcoming
limitations of other tool and its own features those are not already implemented
ever. Sahi has unique features and it can overcome the limitations of Selenium,
those limitations are as follows:
i. AJAX loading cannot be handled by Selenium commands
ii. Working with XPath is brittle and complex
iii. Selenium doesn’t provide inbuilt reporting functionality
iv. May not run the same script in multiple browsers without any
modifications
v. Record and playback is limited to Firefox only
i) AJAX loading cannot be handled by Selenium commands-
Consider an application which has AJAX loading part in it.
Scenario:
It’s a calendar application, It will display the day, month and year after
AJAX loading on clicking on the date in the calendar. Let’s see how the Selenium
and Sahi behaves on clicking on the three dates on the calendar.
Fig. 1.2 Selenium Logo

3
Selenium:
Selenium uses about 20 lines of code with explicit waits to handle the
AJAX loading. By executing the script, 3 dates in the calendar are clicked and
continuous spinner is displayed and no selected date information is displayed.
Sahi:
Sahi uses 4 lines of code with no waits to handle the AJAX loading. By
executing the script, 1 date is clicked and its corresponding information is
displayed after the AJAX loading. Like this, 3 dates are handled.
ii) Working with XPath is brittle and complex-
XPath is used with Selenium to locate the elements on a web page.
Fig. 1.4 Sahi is handled AJAX loading
Fig. 1.3 Spinner is displayed in AJAX loading example using Selenium

4
Selenium:
Execution time is the crucial part of automation. Working with XPath will
leads to increase the time for the execution. XPath can be written in different
ways, depending upon the user it may vary i.e. long or short.
The time taken for the long and short
xpath for the same script in the different
browsers are:
Using Firefox browser-
Long XPath lookup took 11.27337114sec.
Short XPath lookup took 0.087291036sec.
Using Internet Explorer browser-
Long XPath lookup took 22.27337114sec.
Short XPath lookup took 4.087291036sec.
By the above comparison, we observe that there is no best practice to use
locators in Selenium. Using XPath leads to brittle, unmaintainable and slow tests.
We may use different XPath’s for a different purpose in the whole automation
script. But we don’t know the exact time for script execution. This uncertainty of
time taking will increase the execution time.
Sahi:
There is no such problem with the locators and unnecessary consumption
of time. Because, it uses its own wrappers around the DOM to locate the
elements.
iii) Selenium doesn’t have inbuilt reporting functionality-
Selenium:
Seleium consider to be an automation framework and it is not having the
capability of providing the reports for executed script. We need to use some third
party tools to generate the reports in Selenium.
Sahi:
Sahi has capability of generating the reports by its own for the executed
script.
XPath is used to traverse XML
structures which represent
data. An HTML page is not
data. It is a visual
representation of data and is
prone to modification. Further
XPath is not natively available
in browsers. One may need to
use external libraries for it.
Browsers also have
differences in their
implementation of XPath.

5
Below are the reports those are generated after executing the following
script using Sahi:
_include("Sahi_lib.sah");
_navigateTo("http://Sahitest.com/demo/training/");
login("test1", "secret");
_assertVisible(_div("Invalid username or password"));
login("test", "secret");
_highlight(_textbox("q", _near(_cell("Core Java"))));
_setValue(_textbox("q", _near(_cell("Core Java"))), "3");
_setValue(_textbox("q[1]", _near(_cell("Core Java"))), "2");
_setValue(_textbox("q[2]", _near(_cell("Core Java"))), "1");
_click(_button("Add", _near(_cell("Core Java"))));
verifyFunction("1650");
_click(_button("Logout", _near(_cell("Core Java"))));
Fig. 1.5 Script report
Fig. 1.6 Test Case report with execution time

6
Fig. 1.7 Suite report
iv) May not run the same script in multiple browsers without any
modification-
Selenium:
Selenium can only work very efficiently with Firefox and most probably
with chrome. But working with IE is a nightmare. We may not run the same script
written for any web application for Firefox in another browser. The very first
cause is the locating elements, so it may not run the same script in all browsers.
Sahi:
Sahi is able to run the same script in multiple browsers without any
modification to the script. Sahi’s JavaScript and proxy support is guaranteed to
work with any browser and its APIs are normalized to work across browsers.
Sahi's APIs is fairly robust and can withstand peripheral UI changes.The script
written using Sahi is very precise and can be executable in any browser that is
configured with Sahi. Sahi doesn’t use any XPath to locate the elements, Hence
there is no modification of script is required.
v) Record and playback is limited to Firefox only-
We don’t have the facility to record & playback in Selenium other than
Firefox. We can play back in another(other than Firefox) browser, but its
workaround. In Sahi, we can record & playback from any browser and in any OS.
It can also provide the reports to those playbacked scripts.

7
4. How Sahi works?
Sahi has simple and straight forward architecture and it is proxy between
java and browser.
Sahi is proxy between Java and the Browser
Java -> Sahi -> JavaScript -> Browser
Java <- Sahi <- JavaScript <- Browser
Sahi proxy server is written in Java. It uses an HTTP proxy as its core to
inject javascript into web pages. The injected Javascript uses custom code to
identify elements in the browser and simulate the actions like click, type, etc... on
them. Html responses that pass through the proxy are modified such that
Javascript is injected at the start and the end of the response. Sahi Script uses
the same constructs of JavaScript, that adds the capability to interact with the
browser efficiently.
5. Features of Sahi
1. Simple & Powerful Scripting
Sahi Script is based on Javascript. Interact with your File-System,
Databases, Excel sheets, CSV files with ease. Call any Java code or library
from Sahi Script to get added power.
2. Inbuilt Excel Framework
Fig. 1.8 Sahi Architecture

8
Use the inbuilt Excel Framework to let your business analysts and non
technical testers contribute to testing. Easily test from the Controller. Get
detailed inbuilt reports.
3. Intuitive and simple APIs
4. JavaScript based scripts for good programming control
5. Command line and ant support for integration into build processes
6. Supports external proxy, HTTPS, 401 & NTLM authentications
7. Supports browser popups and modal dialogs
8. Can directly invoke Java code from scripts. This is used to access
databases, read pdf files
9. Supports data-driven testing.
6. Conclusion
Sahi is focused towards saving time for testers and developers. Sahi takes
care of reporting, handling suites, distributed playback across multiple machines,
etc. with minimal effort from the tester. In this paper, limitations of Selenium and
uses of Sahi over Selenium are shown. On the basis of analysis performed by
considering the aspects of Selenium limitations like AJAX loading, working with
XPath, multibrowser support and reporting functionality kind of things shows that
automation of web application can be better performed using Sahi over Selenium.
While choosing a good tool, performance is the most important factor to take into
consideration rather than the cost. We conclude that Selenium may be right for
certain specific situation, but SAHI can be the best choice in many more
situations.
References:
Sahi: Automation Testing Tool For Web Applications – official site
http://Sahipro
Sahi - Effective Web Testing (MT)
http://www.slideshare.net/Sahi.co.in/Sahi-effect?fr
[Review]: Web Automation Testing Tool Sahi Pro
http://appaloud.com/review-web-automation-testing-tool-Sahi-pro/
Sahi - Functional testing tool for web application
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxZM0iQZF8A
Principles and Architecture of Sahi:Web Automation Simplified by Narayan Raman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fue5unKjuCM

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