Taking Screenshot Using TakesScreenshot Interface In Selenium

Hello Folks,

In this post we will learn how to take screenshots in Selenium webdriver using selenium provide interface TakesScreenshot .

Why we need to take screenshot?

When we perform manual testing , for each step or important steps, we take screenshot and attach in test result report. Screenshots are proof of test case status. It gives information if test case has passed successfully or reasons if test case has failed.

Taking screenshot of browser by using “TakesScreenshot” interface provided by Selenium:

• Selenium provides an interface named “TakesScreenshot” which helps automaton engineer to take screenshot during execution of automation script.
• “WebElement” interface extends “TakesScreenshot” and all browser driver classes like “ChromeDriver”, “FirefoxDriver”, “InternetExplorerDriver”, “EdgeDriver”  etc implements “TakesScreenshot”.
•  TakesScreenshot interface has a method named “getScreenshotAs” which can capture a screenshot and store it in different ways in specified locations.
• This method can capture screenshot as below based on implementation provided by browser driver class:
  • Entire page
  • Current window
  • Visible portion of the current frame
  • The screenshot of the entire display containing the browser
• I will suggest you to must go throw Hierarchy of Selenium Classes and Interface before proceeding further in this post.
• To use “TakesScreenshot” interface, either we need to do up-casting or down casting depending upon reference of your browser driver class.
• If you write your browser driver class as below:

ChromeDriver driver= new ChromeDriver();

You need to up-cast your driver to TakesScreenshot as below:

TakesScreenshot ts= driver;

• If you write your browser driver class as below:

WebDriver  driver= new ChromeDriver();

You need to down cast your driver to TakesScreenshot as shown below:

TakesScreenshot ts= (TakesScreenshot)driver;

Java Code:

Output:

Explanation of above code:

• Since I have upcasted my ChromeDriver object to WebDriver, to capture screenshot I need to downcast my  ChromeDriver object to TakesScreenshot  interface.
• “OutputType” is an interface which provides you options to take screenshot in different type such as FILE, BASE64, BYTES and class. FILE is mostly used.
• When webdriver tales screenshot, it is stored in temp folder which is cleaned up as soon as execution is over. So we can not find it after execution. This is the reason we need to copy screenshot from temp folder to permanent folder.
• Above code will create a folder within project folder named “ScreenCapturesPNG”. Screenshot will be named by concatenating user provided name and UNIX time stamp.
• I created a reusable method to capture screenshot so that we can use it wherever we need and also you can pass customized name to screenshot.
• I am also returning path of screenshot, which we can use to attach screenshot in to a html report, extent report etc.

Limitation of using TakesScreenshot  interface for capturing screenshot:

• Above code will not able to capture screenshot when an alert is present. It will give you an exception stating “org.openqa.selenium.UnhandledAlertException”.
• This is a known defect whose details you can find here.
• I will share another way of taking screenshot which will work always.

I hope you must have learnt something new from this post.

If you have any doubt, feel free to ask here.

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