How to Build a CI/CD Pipeline for Selenium with C# in Azure

#selenium #cicd #azure

In today’s fast-paced digital world, delivering high-quality applications quickly has become a top priority. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) play a vital role in achieving this by automating the build, test, and release process. When combined with Selenium for automated testing in C#, CI/CD ensures that every change is tested thoroughly before reaching production, minimizing risks and improving overall efficiency.

Azure provides a powerful and flexible platform to set up CI/CD pipelines tailored to testing needs. By integrating Selenium with C# into Azure pipelines, teams can streamline testing, detect issues early, and deliver software faster without compromising quality. In this blog, we’ll explore step-by-step how to build a robust CI/CD pipeline that enhances reliability and accelerates software delivery.

What is Selenium?

Selenium stands as the industry-standard open-source tool for automating web browsers. It’s not just a testing framework; it’s a powerful suite that empowers developers and quality assurance professionals to write scripts that interact with web applications as a real user would. Imagine having a diligent, tireless robot meticulously checking every corner of your website.

With Selenium, you can programmatically instruct a browser to:

Open a website: Navigate to any URL with precision.
Click buttons: Simulate user clicks on interactive elements.
Fill forms: Input data into text fields, dropdowns, and checkboxes.
Check whether certain elements or messages are visible: Assert the presence or absence of text, images, or interactive components.
And much more! From dragging and dropping to handling pop-ups, Selenium covers a vast array of browser interactions.
This capability allows testers to simulate complex user flows and verify if a website is working exactly as expected, uncovering defects long before they reach end-users.

Think of Selenium like a robot that does all your manual website testing for you, automatically.

What are Azure Pipelines?

Azure Pipelines is Microsoft’s robust CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) tool, seamlessly integrated within the comprehensive Azure DevOps platform. CI/CD represents a set of practices designed to deliver software more frequently and reliably by automating the build, test, and deployment phases.

Continuous Integration (CI): This pillar is about automatically building and testing your code every single time a developer commits a change to the shared repository. It’s the practice of integrating code changes frequently to detect and address integration issues early.
Continuous Deployment (CD): This takes CI a step further by automatically delivering the latest, validated version of your application to various environments (like QA, Staging, or even Production) after successful testing.
Azure Pipelines helps you:

Build your application: Automatically compile your source code (e.g., your C# code) into deployable artifacts.
Run your automated tests: Execute your entire suite of automated tests, including critical Selenium UI tests, ensuring quality at every commit.
Deploy your app to environments: Orchestrate the automatic deployment of your validated application to different stages of your software delivery pipeline.
You can imagine Azure Pipelines as your test factory it checks everything step-by-step before shipping the final product.

Why Integrate Them?

By strategically integrating Selenium tests into Azure Pipelines, you’re not just connecting two tools; you’re forging a powerful synergy that combines the precision of web test automation with the unparalleled efficiency of continuous integration. This integration transforms your development lifecycle, offering profound advantages:

Tests run automatically after every code change or deployment: Gone are the days of manual test execution. Every time a developer pushes code, your automated tests spring into action, providing immediate feedback.
Developers get instant feedback if something is broken: Instead of discovering issues days or weeks later, developers are alerted to regressions within minutes, allowing for rapid remediation and preventing bugs from festering.
Saves a lot of manual effort and time: Automating repetitive UI checks frees up valuable human resources, allowing your QA team to focus on more complex, exploratory testing that requires human intuition.
Ensures fewer bugs reach production: By catching defects early and continuously, the risk of critical bugs slipping into live environments is drastically reduced, leading to more stable and reliable releases.
Helps build a more reliable software delivery process: This integrated approach creates a robust safety net, fostering confidence in your releases and enabling faster, more predictable delivery cycles.
Imagine the peace of mind: you push a code update, grab a coffee, and return to find out if everything passed or failed – all without clicking a single manual button! This is the promise of integrating Selenium with Azure Pipelines.

Prerequisites
Before you can orchestrate the seamless integration of Selenium tests with Azure Pipelines using C#, it’s crucial to ensure your environment is properly prepared. Think of this phase as gathering all your essential tools and familiarizing yourself with the blueprints before embarking on a significant construction project. A solid foundation here will save you considerable time and frustration down the line.

Tools and Accounts Needed
To begin this integration journey, make sure you have access to, and familiarity with, the following fundamental tools and accounts:

Visual Studio

This is your primary Integrated Development Environment (IDE), the canvas where you will meticulously craft, debug, and run your C# Selenium test code. It provides a rich set of features that streamline development.
Download from: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/
.NET SDK

The .NET SDK is absolutely essential. It’s the software development kit required to build, compile, and execute your C# code. Ensure it’s not only installed but also correctly added to your system’s PATH environment variables for command-line accessibility.
Download from: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download
Selenium WebDriver

This isn’t a single download but rather a collection of libraries. It’s the powerful engine that enables your C# test scripts to programmatically control and interact with various web browsers like Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and more. You’ll incorporate these libraries into your project via NuGet packages.
Installation: You’ll install crucial NuGet packages such as Selenium.WebDriver, Selenium.Support, and WebDriverManager directly within Visual Studio. WebDriverManager (as its name suggests) is an optional but highly recommended tool that automates the management and download of the correct browser drivers, saving you manual effort and potential compatibility headaches.
Azure DevOps Account

To leverage the robust capabilities of Azure Pipelines, you will need an active account on Azure DevOps. This cloud-based platform provides a suite of tools for collaborative software development, including version control, project management, and, of course, CI/CD pipelines.
Sign up here if you don’t already have one: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/
Azure DevOps Project

Within your Azure DevOps account, you’ll need a dedicated project. This serves as the central hub where all components of your software development lifecycle – your code repositories, pipelines, work items (boards), and more – will reside and be managed collectively.
Create a project in Azure DevOps where you can manage repos, pipelines, boards, etc.
Git

Git is the distributed version control system that you will use to manage your Selenium test code. It’s fundamental for tracking changes, collaborating with teams, and pushing your code to Azure DevOps Repos – the source from which your pipelines will pull code.
Install from: https://git-scm.com/
Summary
So in short, to proceed:

Install all the necessary tools (Visual Studio, Selenium, .NET SDK, Git).
Create an Azure DevOps account and project.
Understand what test automation and CI/CD mean.
Once you’ve got this setup ready, you’re all set to start the integration process!

Creating a Selenium Test Project in C

Having prepared your development environment, the next logical step in our automation journey is creating the Selenium test project in C# using Visual Studio. This project forms the bedrock of your automated testing efforts, eventually serving as the source for execution within Azure Pipelines.

While this blog focuses on the Azure Pipelines integration, setting up a robust Selenium test project involves a few key steps:

Project Setup: Typically, you’d begin by creating an NUnit or MSTest Test Project in Visual Studio.
Package Installation: Essential NuGet packages such as Selenium.WebDriver, Selenium.Support, and the highly recommended WebDriverManager are installed to enable browser interaction.
Basic Test Case: A sample test is then crafted, utilizing [SetUp], [Test], and [TearDown] attributes to manage browser lifecycle and define test actions (e.g., navigating, interacting with elements, asserting outcomes).
For a complete, hands-on tutorial that meticulously guides you through each of these project creation and initial test writing steps, please visit our dedicated article:

Streamline Your Testing: Move from Manual to Automation with Selenium and C#

With your Selenium test project now in place and your tests ready, we can move forward with integrating your code into Azure Repos for pipeline automation.

Pushing Your Code to Azure Repos

Azure Repos is a cornerstone service within Microsoft Azure DevOps, offering a comprehensive, cloud-hosted Git repository system. It functions similarly to popular platforms like GitHub or Bitbucket, but with the distinct advantage of being deeply integrated into the broader Azure ecosystem, providing a unified experience for code management, CI/CD, and project tracking. It ensures your source code, including your valuable automated tests, is secure, versioned, and accessible to your entire team and automated processes.

Step 1: Create a Git Repository in Azure DevOps

Before you can push your code, you need a destination in the cloud.

Navigate to Azure DevOps: Open your web browser and go to https://dev.azure.com. Log in with your Azure DevOps credentials.

Select or Create Project: Choose the existing Azure DevOps project where you intend to house your Selenium test project, or create a new one if you haven’t already.

Access Repositories: In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Repos, then select Files.

Initialize Repository: If this is a brand new repository, Azure DevOps will guide you through creating your first repository and will present you with the Git clone URL along with helpful instructions on how to initialize your local project and push your first commit. This URL is crucial for connecting your local code to the cloud.

Step 2: Push Your Selenium Project from Visual Studio

Now, let’s get your local Selenium project from your development machine into your newly created Azure Repo.

For best practice, we’ll first create and switch to a dedicated feature branch for your work before pushing.

*Initialize Git (if not already): *
If your local project folder isn’t already a Git repository (i.e., it doesn’t have a .git folder), you’ll need to initialize it.

Open Terminal or Visual Studio’s Git Integration: You can use the command prompt/terminal or leverage Visual Studio’s powerful built-in Git capabilities (Team Explorer or Git Changes window). For command-line users, navigate to the root folder of your SeleniumAutomationTests project.
Execute Git Commands: git init : Initializes a new local Git repository in your project folder.