Splinter - Automating Web Tasks

In the realm of web automation and testing, Splinter stands out as a powerful and user-friendly library. Splinter allows you to automate browser actions in a straightforward way, making it an excellent tool for developers and testers who need to interact with web applications programmatically. In this post, we'll explore the basics of Splinter, demonstrate an example, and discuss a practical use case.

What is Splinter?

Splinter is an open-source web application testing tool that provides a high-level API to automate browser actions. It supports various web drivers such as Selenium, Flask, Django, and zope.testbrowser, allowing you to perform actions like filling out forms, clicking buttons, and navigating web pages.

Installation

First, let's install Splinter along with Selenium, which we'll use as our web driver.

pip install splinter selenium        

Getting Started with Splinter

To get started, we'll import Splinter and create a browser instance.

from splinter import Browser

# Initialize the browser
browser = Browser('chrome')  # You can use 'firefox', 'chrome', etc.

# Visit a website
browser.visit('https://www.example.com')        

Example: Automating Google Search

Let's create a simple script that uses Splinter to automate a Google search.

from splinter import Browser

# Initialize the browser
with Browser('chrome') as browser:
    # Visit Google
    browser.visit('https://www.google.com')
    
    # Find the search box
    search_box = browser.find_by_name('q')
    
    # Type in the search query
    search_box.fill('Splinter Python')
    
    # Find and click the search button
    search_button = browser.find_by_name('btnK')
    search_button.click()
    
    # Wait for the results to load
    browser.is_text_present('splinter.readthedocs.io', wait_time=10)
    
    # Print the title of the first result
    first_result = browser.find_by_css('h3').first
    print(first_result.text)        

In this script:

1. We initialize a Chrome browser instance.
2. Navigate to Google's homepage.
3. Locate the search input field by its name attribute (q).
4. Fill in the search query.
5. Find and click the search button.
6. Wait for the search results to load.
7. Print the title of the first search result.

Practical Use Case: Automating Form Submission

Consider a scenario where you need to automate the submission of a contact form on a website. This is a common requirement for automated testing or for populating forms with test data.

Example: Automating a Contact Form

Let's assume we have a simple contact form with fields for name, email, and message.

<form id="contact_form">
    <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Your Name">
    <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="Your Email">
    <textarea name="message" placeholder="Your Message"></textarea>
    <input type="submit" value="Send">
</form>        

Here's how we can automate filling and submitting this form using Splinter:

from splinter import Browser

# Initialize the browser
with Browser('chrome') as browser:
    # Visit the contact page
    browser.visit('https://www.example.com/contact')
    
    # Fill out the form
    browser.find_by_name('name').fill('John Doe')
    browser.find_by_name('email').fill('johndoe@example.com')
    browser.find_by_name('message').fill('Hello, this is a test message.')
    
    # Submit the form
    browser.find_by_css('form#contact_form input[type=submit]').click()
    
    # Verify the form submission
    if browser.is_text_present('Thank you for your message'):
        print('Form submitted successfully!')
    else:
        print('Form submission failed.')        

In this script:

1. We navigate to the contact page of the website.
2. Fill in the name, email, and message fields.
3. Submit the form by clicking the submit button.
4. Verify if the form was submitted successfully by checking for a confirmation message.

Splinter is a powerful tool for web automation, enabling you to programmatically interact with web pages and perform various actions. Whether you are automating routine tasks, testing web applications, or scraping data, Splinter provides a simple and effective API to get the job done.

By leveraging Splinter, you can save time, reduce manual effort, and ensure consistent and reliable interactions with web applications. Happy automating!

Author

Nadir Riyani is an accomplished and visionary Engineering Manager specialising in AI/ML technologies. With a wealth of experience leading high-performing engineering teams, Nadir is passionate about leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive innovation and solve complex challenges. His expertise spans across software development principles, encompassing Agile, Automation and DevOps methodologies. Nadir's commitment to engineering excellence and ability to align technical strategies with business objectives make him a valuable asset to any organization. For further inquiries, please feel free to reach out to him at riyaninadir@gmail.com.