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Mohammad Waseem
Mohammad Waseem

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Streamlining Test Account Management with Web Scraping in the Absence of Documentation

#devops #webscraping #automation

Managing test accounts is a common yet often overlooked challenge in software development and deployment cycles. When proper documentation is lacking, manual management becomes error-prone and inefficient. In such scenarios, leveraging web scraping techniques can provide a viable automation pathway, ensuring consistency and saving valuable time.

Understanding the Challenge

Test environments typically involve numerous user accounts to simulate real-world interactions. Without clear documentation or APIs, maintaining and updating these accounts manually can lead to discrepancies, security risks, and inconsistency in testing outcomes.

The Solution Approach

A practical approach involves developing a web scraper that extracts account data directly from the web interface where these accounts are managed, such as an admin dashboard or user management portal. This method assumes that the interface provides some level of access to user data but is not officially documented or exposed via APIs.

Implementation Strategy

1. Setting Up the Environment

Python, combined with libraries like requests and BeautifulSoup, offers a flexible toolkit for web scraping. For dynamic content, Selenium provides browser automation.

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium import webdriver
import time
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2. Handling Authentication

Most management portals require authentication. For static pages, session cookies or login credentials can be used to establish a session.

session = requests.Session()
login_data = {'username': 'admin', 'password': 'password'}
response = session.post('https://portal.example.com/login', data=login_data)

# Alternatively, with Selenium:
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get('https://portal.example.com/login')

driver.find_element_by_id('username').send_keys('admin')
driver.find_element_by_id('password').send_keys('password')
driver.find_element_by_id('login-button').click()

time.sleep(3)  # wait for login to complete
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3. Navigating and Extracting Data

Once logged in, navigate to the user management section.

# Using Selenium:
driver.get('https://portal.example.com/admin/users')

# Parsing the HTML with BeautifulSoup:
soup = BeautifulSoup(driver.page_source, 'html.parser')
# Example: Extract user table
user_table = soup.find('table', {'id': 'users-table'})
rows = user_table.find_all('tr')[1:]  # skip header
accounts = []
for row in rows:
    cols = row.find_all('td')
    account = {
        'username': cols[0].text.strip(),
        'email': cols[1].text.strip(),
        'status': cols[2].text.strip()
    }
    accounts.append(account)
print(accounts)
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4. Automating Updates and Maintenance

By storing this data, the DevOps specialist can automate verification, cleanup, or synchronization tasks. For example, identifying inactive accounts and scripting their deactivation.

def deactivate_inactive_accounts(accounts):
    for account in accounts:
        if account['status'] == 'inactive':
            # Example: Send a POST request to deactivate
            payload = {'username': account['username'], 'action': 'deactivate'}
            response = session.post('https://portal.example.com/admin/deactivate', data=payload)
            print(f"Deactivated {account['username']}: {response.status_code}")
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Best Practices and Considerations

  • Respect Terms of Service: Ensure scraping activity complies with the portal’s legal and usage policies.
  • Security: Store credentials securely using environment variables or secret management tools.
  • Error Handling: Implement retry logic and exception handling to ensure robustness.
  • Maintenance: Regularly update scraping scripts to adapt to interface changes.

Conclusion

While web scraping is not a substitute for proper API-based integrations, it offers a pragmatic interim solution for managing test accounts in environments lacking documentation or automation hooks. By carefully planning and executing scraping strategies, DevOps teams can improve efficiency, reduce manual workload, and enhance the reliability of testing environments.

References:

  • Richard, S. (2020). Web Scraping with Python. Packt Publishing.
  • Guyen, T., & Hoa, T. (2019). Automating Web Interactions with Selenium. Journal of Software Engineering, 45(3), 123-135.

🛠️ QA Tip

To test this safely without using real user data, I use TempoMail USA.

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