Maven in Selenium: Selenium Maven Dependency Tutorial

In our last Selenium tutorial, we learned a build tool named “Apache Ant”. We also broadly discussed its applicability and importance besides the practical approach.

In this Selenium Testing tutorial, we will learn Maven – a build automation tool that is distributed under Apache Software Foundation. It is mainly used for Java projects. It makes the build consistent with another project.

Maven is also used to manage the dependencies. For example, if you are using selenium version 2.35 and at any later point in time you have to use some other version, Maven can manage easily the same. You will find more examples of this later in this chapter. It works effectively when there is a huge number of Jar files with different versions.

Maven – Build Automation Tool

What is a Build Tool

The build tool is used to set up everything that is required to run your Java code independently. This can apply to your entire Java project. It generates source code, compiling code, packaging code to a jar, etc. Maven provides a common platform to perform these activities, which makes a programmer’s life easier while handling a huge project.

Maven provides pom.xml which is the core of any project. This is the configuration file where all required information is kept. Many of the IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) are available, which makes it easy to use. IDEs are available for tools like Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ, etc.

Maven stores all project JARs. Library jar is in a place called a repository which could be central, local or remote. Maven downloads the dependency jar from a central repository. Most of the commonly used libraries are available at http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/.

Downloaded libraries are stored in the local repository called m2. Maven uses the libraries available in an m2 folder and, if any new dependency is added, then Maven downloads from the central repository to the local repository. If libraries are not available in the central repository, then Maven looks for the remote repository.

The user has to configure the remote repository in pom.xml to download from the remote repository.

Below is an example of configuring a remote repository to pom.xml file. Provide the id and URL of the repository where libraries are stored.

<repositories>
     <repository>
         <id>libraryId</id>
         <url>http://comanyrepositryId</url>
     </repository>
</repositories>

General Phrases used in Maven:

• groupId: Generally groupId refers to domain id. For best practices, the company name is used as groupId. It identifies the project uniquely.
• artifactId: It is the name of the Jar without version.
• version: This tag is used to create a version of the project.
• Local repository: Maven downloads all the required dependencies and stores them in the local repository called m2. We will share more details regarding the same in the next topic.

Build Life Cycle

Basic maven phases are used as below:

• clean: deletes all artifacts and targets that are created already.
• compile: used to compile the source code of the project.
• test: test the compiled code and these tests do not require to be packaged or deployed.
• package: package is used to convert your project into a jar or war, etc.
• install: install the package into the local repository for another project.

Maven Setup

Follow these steps:

Observe and adhere to the following instructions:

Navigate to System Properties ->Advanced System Settings->Environment Variable->System Variable->New->Add path of Maven folder

Step #4: Edit the path variable and provide the bin folder path.

Step #5: Now verify the maven installation using the command prompt and don’t forget to setup JAVA_HOME

Use mvn –version to verify the Maven version and the output comes like below.

Install Maven IDE in Eclipse

Maven provides IDE to integrate with Eclipse. I am using Eclipse Juno here.

Navigate to Help->Eclipse Marketplace-> Search maven ->Maven Integration for Eclipse ->INSTALL

After installation, restart Eclipse.

Then right-click on pom.xml and verify all the options are available like below. 

Create Maven project:

Step #1: Navigate to File- new-others-Maven-Maven Project-Click Next

Step #2: Check the Create a simple project and click Next.

Step #3: Provide Group Id and Artifact Id. You can change the version of Jar as per your wish. Here I am using the default name. Click Finish.

Step #4: After finishing, you will find the project structure is created like below. pom.xml is created which is used to download all dependencies.

pom.xml file looks like below:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.softwaretestinghelp.test</groupId>
<artifactId>com.softwaretestinghelp.selenium</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
</project>

Step #5: Add dependencies for Selenium.

All selenium Maven artifacts are available in below central repository

http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/seleniumhq/selenium/

Add the following dependencies in pom.xml for selenium:

<dependency>
       <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
       <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
       <version>2.41.0</version>
 </dependency>

Similarly, the following is the dependency for Junit :

<dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>4.4</version>
 </dependency>

If you want to add other third-party jars then add those dependencies in pom.xml

Step #6: Final pom.xml will be like below:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.softwaretestinghelp.test</groupId> <artifactId>com.softwaretestinghelp.selenium</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
       <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
       <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
       <version>2.41.0</version>
   </dependency>
   </dependencies>
</project>

Step #7: Maven will download all the dependency jars into the local repository called .m2.

The M2 folder is basically inside Users->username->m2

All the jars will be placed in a folder called repository which is inside .m2 folder. Maven will create separate folders for the different versions and different group id.

Step #8: If an m2 folder does not populate in Maven dependencies, then you can populate those jars manually.

– Eclipse Windows ->Preference
– Navigate Java->Build Path->Classpath Variables

Click New Button ->Define M2_REPO and provide the path of the m2 folder.

Step #9: Upon successful setup, you will find the Maven Dependencies folder below which will have the required dependency jar for the project

Build the Project

The project can be built by both using IDE and command prompt.

Using IDE you have to right-click on POM-Run As-Maven Build

Enter goals like clean install etc. and click Run.
The same can be done using a command prompt. Navigate to the project folder where pom.xml lies.
And use the below commands to clean, compile, and install

For clean: mvn clean
For compile: mvn compile
For Install: mvn install

Below is the info which is displayed when you clean any project and shows “BUILD SUCCESS”.

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building com.softwaretestinghelp.0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]
 [INFO] --- maven-clean-plugin:2.4.1:clean (default-clean) @ com.softwaretestinghelp ---[INFO] Deleting C:\Users\rshwus\WORKSPACE\com.softwaretestinghelp\target
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 0.702s
[INFO] Finished at: Sat May 24 18:58:22 IST 2014
[INFO] Final Memory: 2M/15M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion

Maven simplifies the code handling and process of building the project. Most of the projects follow the maven structure.

Download all dependencies provided the dependencies are available in the Maven central repository. If any of the dependencies are not available in the Maven central repository then you have to add the repository path in pom.xml explicitly.

There are many other build tools available in like ant. But it is better to use maven while dealing with different versions and different dependencies. Maven even can manage the dependencies of dependencies. Other tools may not provide such flexibility like maven. Please post your queries anything related to maven here.

Next Tutorial #25: In the upcoming tutorial, we will discuss a continuous integration tool known as Hudson. We would study about its importance, role, and benefits in the Test Automation Framework. We would look at the Hudson straight from the beginning, from its installation to its working.