Using Selenium with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Earlier this week I was asked to look at the possiblity of using Selenium with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 since it now supports Firefox (nothing like a clued up Test manager). At any rate, I thought I would give it a try.

The problem was that recording tests with the Selenium IDE wasn't not working as I was hitting constant javascript errors, so I decided to use the IDE as some sort of guidance and then modify the code generated to get it to work.

The test test [sic.] was to generate an entity (change) off another (callback) and then check that depending on the change type (field pre_type) various workflows and/or plugins would trigger.

Why this needed doing with Selenium it's beyond me, but there you go.

I won't go into details about the entities, but suffice to say that callback is the main entity in the system, there is a 1:N relationship between callback and change and changes can be created from the callback form.

So, I installed Selenium, downloaded the IE driver and got coding:

using System.Text;

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Firefox;
using OpenQA.Selenium.IE;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Support.UI;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Threading;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            IWebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(@"C:\Users\john\Downloads\selenium-dotnet-2.32.1\IEDriverServer_Win32_2.32.3\");
            driver.Url = "https://devcrm.dev.local//main.aspx?skipNotification=1";
            driver.FindElement(By.CssSelector("#pre_callback > nobr.ms-crm-NavBar-Subarea-Title")).Click();

            driver.SwitchTo().Frame("contentIFrame");

            driver.FindElement(By.Id("crmGrid_findCriteria")).Clear();
            driver.FindElement(By.Id("crmGrid_findCriteria")).SendKeys("*William*");
            driver.FindElement(By.Id("crmGrid_findCriteriaButton")).Click();

            driver.FindElement(By.Id("gridBodyTable_primaryField_{B2C895DC-DEAD-BEEF-9B08-F05056B2009F}_0")).Click();

            WaitForNewWindow(driver, 2);
            driver.SwitchTo().Window(driver.WindowHandles[1]);
            driver.SwitchTo().Frame("contentIFrame");

            driver.FindElement(By.Id("nav_pre_pre_callback_pre_change")).Click();
            driver.SwitchTo().DefaultContent();

            driver.FindElement(By.Id("pre_change|OneToMany|SubGridAssociated|Mscrm.SubGrid.pre_change.AddNewStandard-Large")).Click();

   WaitForNewWindow(driver, 3);

            driver.SwitchTo().Window(driver.WindowHandles[2]);
            driver.SwitchTo().Frame("contentIFrame");
            driver.FindElement(By.Id("DateInput")).SendKeys(DateTime.Now.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy"));
            driver.FindElement(By.Id("pre_changedetails")).SendKeys("Selenium Attack");
            
   for(int i=1; i < 6; i++
   {
                 SelectDropDown(driver, "pre_type", i);
                 driver.SwitchTo().DefaultContent();
                 driver.FindElement(By.Id("pre_change|NoRelationship|Form|Mscrm.Form.pre_change.SaveAndClose-Large")).Click();
   }
            driver.Quit();

        }

        private static void WaitForNewWindow(IWebDriver driver, int windowNumber)
        {
            while (driver.WindowHandles.Count != windowNumber)
            {
                Thread.Sleep(133);
            }
        }

        private static void SelectDropDown(IWebDriver driver, string fieldName, int selection)
        {
            IWebElement sourceWeb = driver.FindElement(By.Id(fieldName));
            SelectElement source = new SelectElement(sourceWeb);
            source.SelectByIndex(selection);
        }
    }
}

There is no reason why this could not be done as a unit test, but I thought it would be easier to distribute to the testers as a console app (It does need a lot of work, I know)

I have to say that I found it extremely flaky, in fact it seemed to need two runs, one to warm up and then it would almost always work.

Since, I haven't used Selenium much, I can't say how reliable or otherwise it is, but using the IE driver was not found suitable for testers.

I think it can be used for early morning checks and things like that but not for automated testing, all in all it was a big disappointment.