Launching Helium: A Selenium wrapper that makes web automation 50% easier

[Michael Herrmann]

Hi everyone,

I'm working for a startup called BugFree Software and would like to announce that today we're launching our second product!

Helium is a library that wraps around Selenium to simplify web automation. It does away with many of the technicalities involved with web scripting. For example: Here is a Selenium script. Can you guess what it does?

    >>> ff = Firefox()
    ...
    >>> text_area = ff.find_element_by_id("u_0_1q")
    >>> text_area.send_keys("Hello World!")
    >>> button = ff.find_element_by_class_name("_42g-")
    >>> button.click()

Here is the same script rewritten using Helium:

    >>> start_firefox()
    ...
    >>> write("Hello World!", into="Update Status")
    >>> click("Post")

Can you now guess what it does? That's right; It updates your Facebook status.

In an extended comparison that we were invited to write for the December issue of Professional Tester (professionaltester.com), we found that an example script automating Gmail took 66% fewer lines of code and 75% less effort using Helium than with Selenium alone.

You can find more information and download Helium from http://heliumhq.com. Any feedback would be highly appreciated.

Hoping to hear your thoughts and comments,
Michael Herrmann
heliumhq.com