The Power Debugger Plugin v1.0 for Selenium IDE Released

The pause on fail tool button added to Selenium IDE

This plugin for Selenium-IDE improves debugging and troubleshooting issues with scripts. This plugin adds the pause on fail tool to the Selenium IDE toolbar. When pause on fail is turned on, Selenium IDE would pause the execution of the test case when there is an error or a command failure, allowing you to troubleshoot the problem. Get it from the Firefox addons site.

Once you install this plugin, a pause on fail tool button will be available in Selenium IDE toolbar. See the screen shot for details.

Mini user guide for the plugin

  • Click on the pause on fail tool button to turn the pause on fail on.
  • Click on the pause on fail tool button again to turn the pause on fail off.
  • You can turn pause on fail on or off any time, including when the test is running.
  • Once the test case pauses due to pause on fail, you can use the usual resume/step buttons to continue the test execution.

Known Issues

  • The test case will not be paused if the failure is on the last command of any test case.

To use this plugin, you will need to install Selenium IDE extension of at least version 1.0.4 first. Only in English for now, more languages will be added on requests.

Other Thoughts

I have been really busy, was not able to release any plugins or updates on the schedule I wanted. This plugin was one of the oldest changes I made to Selenium IDE. I think it was Selenium IDE v1.0b2 at that time. This was one single change that saved me a huge amount of time. Releasing this as a plugin was tricky and I have been delaying it for several months. I am still not happy with the code, but it has been relatively stable so you can go ahead, give it a try, if things break completely, you can always uninstall it :-)

As usual feel free to leave comments, improvements, advise, criticism, problems…

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7 Responses to The Power Debugger Plugin v1.0 for Selenium IDE Released

  1. Dave Hunt says:

    What a great idea! Keep up the good work Samit!

  2. chester says:

    Hi
    I noticed that after performing pause on error line, selenium ide goes to the next line. In my point of view if i had error i would like to pause on thios line, fix it and ther perform again. At this moment it is not possible.

    Thanks
    Chester

    • Samit Badle says:

      Hi Chester,

      Your observation is correct. Pause on fail tries to catch the error thrown by Selenium, which means that command has already been executed. Hence, you will be on the next line. Making Selenium IDE stay on the same command would probably require some changes to the Selenium IDE itself which would be unappropriate for a plugin.

      Cheers,
      Samit

  3. Portia says:

    You can provide options such as “retry the eerrored line” again or go to the next line of execution after the script pauses after encountering an error. This can add flexibilty to the tool.

  4. Pingback: Selenium IDE v1.6.0 Released and Includes Firefox 10 Support | Really Simple Thoughts of a Perpetual Learner

  5. Ved says:

    This is awesome, thank you for providing this. I accidentally found this from stackoverflow.

    Ved

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