Before: Verbose Selenium Code

Traditional Selenium browser automation scripts can be verbose and difficult to maintain, requiring explicit element locators and waits.

Here’s an example of a Selenium script that logs into GitHub, navigates to a repository, and stars and unstars it:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

# Start Chrome

with webdriver.Chrome() as driver:
    # Navigate to GitHub login page
    driver.get('https://github.com/login')

    # Login
    username_field = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'login_field')
    password_field = driver.find_element(By.ID, 'password')

    username_field.send_keys('1mh')
    password_field.send_keys('1Secretpw')

    login_button = driver.find_element(By.NAME, 'commit')
    login_button.click()

    # Navigate to repository
    driver.get('https://github.com/mherrmann/helium')

    # Wait for and click Star button
    wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)
    star_button = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//button[contains(text(), 'Star')]")))
    star_button.click()

    # Wait for and click Unstar button
    unstar_button = wait.until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//button[contains(text(), 'Unstar')]")))
    unstar_button.click()

After: Simplified Helium Code

Helium provides several benefits over traditional Selenium scripts:

• Helium’s APIs simplify code, making it concise and readable by eliminating explicit element locators and waits.
• Helium scripts are more maintainable, as you can focus on logic without worrying about implementation details.
• Helium’s intuitive API enables faster development, allowing you to write browser automation scripts quickly and save time.

With Helium, the same script becomes much simpler and more intuitive:

from helium import *

# Start Chrome and navigate to GitHub login page
start_chrome('github.com/login')

# Enter username and password
write('1mh', into='Username')
write('1Secretpw', into='Password')

# Click the Sign in button
click('Sign in')

# Navigate to the Helium repository
go_to('github.com/mherrmann/helium')

# Star and then unstar the repository
click(Button('Star'))
click(Button('Unstar'))

# Close the browser
kill_browser()

 Link to Helium.