Manual testing to automatic testing A formal training programme for testers at Bands 3 to 7

Spec: testingexamples fixture contract

Summary

This suite uses Selenium and Mocha, in JavaScript, to check the fixture section of the home page of https://testingexamples.github.io, a deliberately stable page for practising browser automation. It is the worked example for Modules 10 and 11 of the training programme: it locates elements by id, name, class name, link text, CSS, and XPath, acts on every form input, waits explicitly for every element, and makes real assertions about each with node:assert/strict.

Scope

This spec covers tests/ui/fixtures.test.js and its page object tests/ui/pages/fixture-page.js only: the 11 tests they run, the exact selectors and strings they check, and the criteria for the suite to pass.

Out of scope: the rest of the site (header, navigation, footer, articles, and other locales), which can change freely without affecting the fixture contract.

Principles and rules

  • tests/ui/fixtures.test.js is the implementation. This file is the specification. They must agree exactly. If they ever disagree, that is a defect in one of them: fix it before doing anything else.
  • Every selector comes from the fixture contract in testingexamples.github.io/spec/index.md. If the contract changes, change the page object, then this spec.
  • Every test makes real assertions with node:assert/strict. Selenium does not wait by itself, so the page object waits explicitly for every element with driver.wait(until.elementLocated(...)), and clicks only once the element is in view and on top. No fixed sleeps.
  • The browser is quit in an after hook, whatever happens.
  • The site is a public fixture built for this purpose, so running this suite in CI is acceptable. Do not run it in a tight loop.

Detail

Every test starts by opening https://testingexamples.github.io/ and waiting for #form-1.

  1. Id examples have the expected text

    • Assert #id-example-1, #id-example-2, and #id-example-3 have text exactly Id Example 1, Id Example 2, and Id Example 3.

  2. Name examples have the expected text

    • Assert [name="name-example-1"] to -3 have text exactly Name Example 1 to Name Example 3.

  3. Class examples have the expected text

    • Assert .class-example-1 to -3 have text exactly Class Example 1 to Class Example 3.

  4. Link examples point to the expected hrefs

    • Locate each link by link text Link Example 1 to Link Example 3.
    • Assert each href attribute, as written in the HTML (getDomAttribute), is exactly https://1.example.com, https://2.example.com, and https://3.example.com.

  5. Ordered list has alfa, bravo, charlie in order

    • Assert the li items of #ol-example-1 have texts exactly alfa, bravo, charlie, in that order.

  6. Unordered list has alfa, bravo, charlie

    • Assert #ul-example-1 has exactly 3 li items, with texts alfa, bravo, charlie.

  7. Text input starts with its default value and can be filled

    • Given the input #text-example-1-id has value Text Example 1 Value
    • When it is cleared and hello is typed
    • Then its value is hello.

  8. Checkbox starts unchecked and can be checked

    • Given the checkbox #checkbox-example-1-id is not selected
    • When it is clicked
    • Then it is selected.

  9. Radio buttons are mutually exclusive

    • When #radio-example-1-option-1-id is clicked, then it is selected.
    • When #radio-example-1-option-2-id is then clicked, then option 2 is selected and option 1 is not.

  10. Select has alfa first and can select charlie

    • Using Selenium's Select helper, assert the options of #select-example-1-id have texts exactly alfa, bravo, charlie.
    • Assert the first selected option's value is a.
    • When the option with visible text charlie is selected, then the selected option's value is c.

  11. Submit button is found by XPath

    • Assert XPath //input[@type="submit"] finds an element with value Submit.

Acceptance criteria

  • All 11 tests pass against the live https://testingexamples.github.io site, in Chrome.
  • The suite runs in the CI ui job on every pull request.
  • Verified on 2026-10-07: 11 passed, headless, in about 4 seconds, three runs in a row.

Sources

View this document on GitHub practice-repo/spec/example/index.md