Introduction to Web Automation: Level Up Your Skills with Hands-On Exercises

Introduction to Web Automation: Level Up Your Skills with Hands-On Exercises

Introduction

In today’s fast-evolving digital landscape, businesses often face the challenge of automating web tasks, such as website testing, managing dynamic content, and simplifying routine operations. These tasks can become repetitive and time-consuming, and traditional automation tools typically require complex coding knowledge, making it difficult for non-technical teams to handle them effectively.

This is where no-code automation platforms like Leapwork come in, offering solutions to address these challenges with ease. Leapwork allows users to automate processes without any programming knowledge. In this article, you’ll have the opportunity to explore web automation in a hands-on way, working through five practical exercises. These tasks will start with simpler activities, like selecting a value from a dropdown, and gradually introduce more complex automations such as data scraping. By the end of these exercises, you will have a clear understanding of web automation principles and how to apply them using Leapwork’s intuitive, user-friendly interface. Let's get started and take your web automation skills to the next level!

Exercise 1. User Documentation: Selecting a Value from a Dropdown

Purpose

Imagine you’re filling out a form on a website, and you need to select an option from a long dropdown list. Automating this dropdown selection can save valuable time, especially when testing a contact form or automating data entry processes. This exercise gives you a hands-on understanding of how this simple task plays a crucial role in speeding up web interactions.

Your Aim

The objective here is to automate the process of selecting a value from a dropdown menu on a website.

Steps to Automate the Use Case:

Step 1: Open a web browser and visit a website, such as The Internet. This website will be used for automating the dropdown selection.

Step 2: Locate the dropdown menu on the page. Then click on the dropdown to display the list of options. After this, select Option 2 from the list. This can be done by either clicking on it manually or using the automation tool to select it programmatically.

Step 3: After selecting Option 2, ensure that the value displayed in the dropdown is indeed Option 2. This validation step is critical for ensuring that the correct option has been selected.

Expected Outcome

After completing these steps, the selected value in the dropdown should display as Option 2.

By following these steps, you’ll learn how to automate the process of selecting a value from a dropdown and verify that the correct option is chosen. This exercise sets the foundation for automating basic web interactions, ensuring that your testing or task automation functions as expected.

Exercise 2. User Documentation: Drag and Drop Operation Using "Drag Web Element" Block

Purpose

Have you ever used an app where you can drag and drop items—like moving a photo into a folder or rearranging tasks in a project management tool? In this exercise, you will automate that very process. By learning how to move elements on a web page programmatically, you'll acquire a powerful skill to handle tasks such as managing files or reordering items dynamically on websites.

Your Aim

The goal of this exercise is to automate the process of performing a drag-and-drop operation using the "Drag Web Element" block.

Steps to Automate the Use Case:

Step 1: At first, open a web browser and visit a website that supports drag-and-drop functionality, such as The Internet. This will be the site where you will automate the drag-and-drop action.

Step 2: Identify Value A (the element you want to move) and Value B (the target location) on the webpage. Then use the automation tool’s "Drag Web Element" block to simulate dragging Value A from its original position and dropping it onto Value B.

Step 3: After the drag-and-drop action, check whether Value A has successfully been placed onto Value B or in the target area. This validation step is crucial to ensure the drag-and-drop operation was executed correctly.

Expected Outcome

The drag-and-drop operation should be successful, with Value A now positioned at the intended location or over Value B.

By completing this exercise, you will be equipped to automate drag-and-drop operations, which are often used in web applications to simulate user interactions. This is an essential skill for validating dynamic web elements and improving the efficiency of automated testing or task automation.

Exercise 3. User Documentation: Handling Dynamic Content

Purpose

Have you ever visited a website with dynamic content—such as real-time stock tickers or live social media feeds? Handling these types of elements can be tricky because the content updates constantly. In this exercise, you’ll learn how to capture and work with this ever-changing data, making your web automation more powerful and effective when dealing with real-time information.

Your Aim

The goal of this exercise is to automate the process of handling dynamic content, scraping it from a website, and storing it in an Excel file.

Steps to Automate the Use Case:

Step 1: Open a web browser and go to the URL of a website with dynamic content. For example, visit The Internet. This webpage will be used to scrape dynamic content.

Step 2: Identify the dynamic content on the page, such as data tables, changing images, or updates. Use an automation tool to capture or scrape this content, which updates in real time.

Step 3: Once the dynamic content has been scraped, automate the process to write the extracted data into an Excel file. This allows you to save and analyze the content for future use.

Expected Outcome

The dynamic content should be successfully scraped and saved into an Excel file for further reference.

By completing this exercise, you’ll gain the ability to handle dynamic web content in your automation processes. This is an important skill, especially for tasks where data is constantly changing or updating, like tracking stock prices or collecting real-time user-generated content.

Exercise 4. User Documentation: Scraping Top 10 Movie Details from IMDb

Purpose

Who doesn’t love movies? Imagine you could automatically collect details about the top-rated films on IMDb—such as movie names, release years, and ratings. In this exercise, you will learn how to scrape structured data from a webpage, a skill you can use for content aggregation, personal movie databases, or data collection for analysis.

Your Aim

In this exercise, you’ll automate the process of scraping the top 10 movies listed on IMDb, including details such as movie names, release years, and IMDb ratings, and store them in a spreadsheet.

Pre-requisites

Ensure you have the following tools:

Steps to Automate the Scraping Process:

Step 1: Open your preferred browser (e.g., Chrome, Firefox) and go to IMDb’s website by typing the URL: www.imdb.com.

Step 2: On the IMDb homepage, find the menu (usually at the top of the page). Under Movies, select "Top Rated Movies." This takes you to the page showing the highest-rated films on IMDb.

Step 3: On the Top-Rated Movies page, you’ll see a list of movies ranked by IMDb ratings. For the top 10 movies, collect the following details:

Step 4: Open the prepared spreadsheet and enter the details for each of the top 10 movies in the respective columns (Movie Name, Release Year, IMDb Rating).

Step 5: Once you’ve entered all the data for the top 10 movies, save the spreadsheet on your computer or cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.) for future reference.

By following these steps, you’ll successfully automate the scraping of IMDb’s top-rated movies and store this data in a structured format. This exercise is perfect for building a movie database or tracking film ratings over time.

Exercise 5. User Documentation: Scraping Table Data from the Internet and Storing It in a Spreadsheet

Purpose

Imagine you need to collect a lot of data from a website—say, a table of employee details or product information. Manually copying and pasting this data would be tedious, but with automation, this task becomes fast and efficient. In this exercise, you’ll learn how to scrape table data from a webpage and store it in a spreadsheet for easy analysis.

Your Aim

In this exercise, you’ll automate the process of scraping table data from the Example 1 table on the website https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/tables, and save the data in a spreadsheet.

Pre-requisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following:

Steps to Automate the Scraping Process:

Step 1: Open a web browser and visit the URL: https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/tables.

Step 2: Look for Example 1, the first table on the page. This table contains data on various employees, such as their name, position, office, age, start date, and salary.

Step 3: Using automation, scrape all data from the Example 1 table. Each row represents an employee, and each column contains specific details (Name, Position, Office, etc.).

Step 4: Open your prepared spreadsheet (Excel or Google Sheets). For each piece of data scraped, enter it into the corresponding column in your spreadsheet (e.g., Name, Position, Office).

Step 5: Save the Spreadsheet After entering all the data, save the file to your computer or cloud storage. By completing these steps, you’ll have successfully scraped table data from a webpage and stored it in a spreadsheet. This exercise is useful for automating the collection of large datasets for analysis or reporting.

By completing these hands-on exercises, you’ll gain a comprehensive understanding of web automation tasks—from simple dropdown selections to advanced data scraping. These skills will allow you to automate routine web tasks and enhance your ability to interact with various types of web elements programmatically. With no-code platforms like Leapwork, you’ll be able to streamline your workflow and save valuable time on repetitive tasks.