Automated Testing PDF Download in Selenium WebDriver

How to test downloading PDFs in Selenium WebDriver

A repost of my daughter’s article with permission and slight modification. I added it here for the convenience of my blog subscribers. You can find more Selenium examples like this one in my eBook: Selenium WebDriver Recipes in Ruby.

This is also included in my “How to in Selenium WebDriver” series.

Many websites feature links that download a PDF document. These PDF files might be static (e.g. a restaurant menu) or dynamically generated (e.g. a receipt).

This tutorial will show you how to download a PDF document and verify its contents in a Selenium WebDriver automated test script.

Table of Contents:
· Test Design
  ∘ Saving the download file to a specific location
  ∘ PDF verification library
· Open browser with specified download folder
· Download and Verify the downloaded file
· Verify the PDF
  ∘ Verify PDF page count
  ∘ Verify PDF contents
· Completed Test Script

Test Design

1. Navigate to a web page and download the PDF
   For my example, I’m downloading a book sample PDF (static) at http://zhimin.com/books/pwta.
2. Verify the downloaded PDF exists
   Once the file is downloaded from the…