Authentication testing in Testing Fundamentals - Test Execution Trace

Test Overview

This test checks if a user can successfully log in with valid credentials and verifies that the welcome message appears after login.

Test Code - Selenium with unittest

Testing Fundamentals

import unittest
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

class TestAuthentication(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.driver = webdriver.Chrome()
        self.driver.get('https://example.com/login')

    def test_valid_login(self):
        driver = self.driver
        username_input = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(
            EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, 'username'))
        )
        username_input.send_keys('validUser')

        password_input = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'password')
        password_input.send_keys('validPass123')

        login_button = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'login-button')
        login_button.click()

        welcome_message = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(
            EC.visibility_of_element_located((By.ID, 'welcome-msg'))
        )
        self.assertEqual(welcome_message.text, 'Welcome, validUser!')

    def tearDown(self):
        self.driver.quit()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

Execution Trace - 6 Steps

Step	Action	System State	Assertion	Result
1	Test starts and opens Chrome browser	Browser window opens at 'https://example.com/login' showing login form with username and password fields	-	PASS
2	Waits for username input field to be present and enters 'validUser'	Username input field is visible and filled with 'validUser'	-	PASS
3	Finds password input field and enters 'validPass123'	Password input field is visible and filled with 'validPass123'	-	PASS
4	Finds and clicks the login button	Login button clicked, page starts loading user dashboard	-	PASS
5	Waits for welcome message to be visible	Welcome message element with text 'Welcome, validUser!' is visible on the page	Check that welcome message text equals 'Welcome, validUser!'	PASS
6	Test ends and browser closes	Browser window closes	-	PASS

Failure Scenario

Failing Condition: Welcome message does not appear or text is incorrect after login

Execution Trace Quiz - 3 Questions

What does the test verify after clicking the login button?

A That the welcome message with correct username appears

B That the login button is disabled

C That the password field is cleared

D That the browser navigates to the homepage URL

Key Result

Always wait explicitly for elements to appear before interacting or asserting to avoid flaky tests.