I got the free copy of the book "Learning Selenium Testing Tools with Python" from Packt publishers for a review. I really thank the publisher for giving me the opportunity to have a good read on this book and I really appreciate the work done by the author "Unmesh Gundecha". The following is the brief snapshot of my review.
To say the foreword about the book, the know-how of "Selenium" is presented from the roots to the use case of smart phone environment.
Chapters 1 - 2 ----------------- The first two chapters describe the tools set-up and basic environment of selenium test case. PyCharm with Eclipse environment is used as the platform for the entire book. But, readers need not be confined to the same, it depends on the use case.
Chapters 3 - 6 ----------------- The later chapters from 3 onwards have put essence of selenium especially giving the scope of webdriver concept for various browsers and common utilities of it. The author is very clever in presenting the chapter - 6 on cross browsing platforms. This broadens the readers usage of selenium for any browsers.
Chapter 7 ------------------ This chapter is very brief but gives motivation and scope to adapt smart devices. Both Android and iOS are given equal importance and Appium test automation tool interface for both is explained with adequate examples.
Chapters 8 - 10 -----------------
The data driven testing is explained in chapter - 8 and various types of data formats/files are briefly covered. The page object concept is the high light of this chapter. Chapters 9 & 10 explains the advance techniques Selenium webdriver frame work and the scope of integration with other tools. I feel chapter 9 should have been put in early chapters.
All in all, this book keeps "Python" again as live wire with "Selenium" webdriver scope in the smart era of technology.
This is a great guidebook for learning about Testing in general, though even for the more experienced QA and Testing Professional, there willl still be some nice tricks to add to your arsenal. If you are coming from using Selenium with Java, the book can help you start using Selenium via Python, which in my personal opinion, is much clearer.
There are plenty of Python examples, helpful diagrams, and the tempo of the book is perfect.
After a few chapters, I was able to write a few automatic tasks for a web-based Administration tool I'm responsible for. You have many of the API or class methods listed in their appropriate chapter, which is great for referencing even after you finish the book.
Overall, if you want to take your Python skills to start doing some great Web Automation, this is the book to go with.
Was a very good intro to using Selenium with Python. Code samples from the book could be downloaded so you could spend your time understanding the code instead of retyping it in all. In addition to covering some of the basics such as how to locate elements and use the WebDriver API other chapters covered things that I thought were pretty helpful, such as explaining Page Object Pattern and Data Driven Testing.
This should be a good reference book for someone that is building up their knowledge of how to use Selenium.