Automation testing of Shadow DOM elements with Katalon Studio

Important:

Chrome Browser from version 53 onwards. You can see browser versions with shadow DOM support here: Shadow DOM (V1)

Shadow DOM allows DOM elements to contain child nodes and CSS, which helps web developers by better encapsulating their code. But this creates challenges for automation testing, because elements inside a shadow root technically don't exist in the main DOM.

In this article, we demonstrate how to test shadow DOM elements in the Katalon Studio framework.

We use the demo site Books. All the elements in this demo website are under a shadow root. In this demonstration, we identify shadow DOM objects, then verify them by successfully inputting: "hello World" into the website's search bar.

Do as follows:

1. Create a new project. Go to File > New > Project. Here, we name the project Shadow DOM Testing.

   
   
   

2. In the demo website, navigate to the search bar, right-click > Inspect. The Chrome Developer tool opens and highlights its elements.

   
   
   

3. At this point, there are two Shadow DOM elements that you need to identify in the Chrome Developer tool:

   • The property of the parent object. The parent object is the shadow host. In this demo site, book-app is the parent object.

   
   
   

   • The property of the child object. The child object is the shadow DOM elements we are inspecting. In this example, we look at the property of the search bar's elements.

   
   
   

   You can learn more about object properties from the Mozilla developer documentation here: Working with objects.

4. After identifying the property of the parent object and the child object, return to the Katalon Studio framework to define object properties.

   Katalon Studio supports the following selection methods to create the object's properties: Attributes, XPath, CSS, Image. You can learn more about using the best selection method for object properties here: Selection Method.

   In this example, we use the Attributes method.

   • Create the parent object:

     • Go to File > New > Test Object. Name it as book_app.
     • In the Object's Properties section, click Add. An Add Property dialog opens.
     • Fill in the Add Property dialog as shown below:

       Name	Conditions	Value
       apptitle	equals	BOOKS

     • Click OK. The apptitle property appears in the Object's Properties section.
     • Check the Detect object by box in the apptitle property line to generate a Selected Locator for the object.

       
       
       

   • Create the child object:

     • Go to File > New > Test Object. Name it as input.
     • In the Object's Properties section, click Add. An Add Property dialog opens.

     • Fill in the Add Property dialog as shown below:

       Name	Conditions	Value
       id	equals	input

     • Check the Detect object by box in the input property line to generate a Selected Locator for the object.

       
       
       

     • After defining the property, in the Settings section, choose the Shadow DOM parent option, then click Browse. An Object Repository Browser dialog opens.
     • In the open dialog, choose the book_app object as the parent object. Click OK.
     • Once finished, the input object identifies book_app as its Shadow Root Parent as below.

       
       
       

5. Next, create a new test case. Go to File > New > Test Case. We name ours Shadow DOM Test.

6. In the new test case, switch to the Script tab, copy and paste the following script into the test script.

   import static com.kms.katalon.core.testobject.ObjectRepository.findTestObject
   
   import com.kms.katalon.core.webui.keyword.WebUiBuiltInKeywords as WebUI
   
   //Open browser and navigate to the AUT website
   WebUI.openBrowser('https://books-pwakit.appspot.com/explore?q=')
   
   //Input text into the search bar
   WebUI.setText(findTestObject('Object Repository/input'), 'hello World')
   
   //Delay 5s to view the result
   WebUI.delay(5)
   
   //Close the browser to clean up
   WebUI.closeBrowser()
   

   
   
   

   You can also write the test case in the Manual tab. Learn more about the manual mode here: Create the test in Manual mode

7. Run the test script. In the main toolbar. Click Run > Chrome.

   Katalon Studio should successfully find the element within the shadow root and input the text: "hello World" into the search bar.