How to Take Screenshots in Selenium Automatically on Failure

 📸 Automatically Take Screenshots on Test Failure with Selenium

✅ Why Take Screenshots?

Screenshots help you:

Visually debug test failures.

Capture the exact state of the application during a failure.

Improve test reporting.

🧪 Using unittest + Selenium

Here’s how to capture screenshots automatically when a test fails.

🔧 1. Basic Setup

Install Selenium (if you haven’t already):

bash

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pip install selenium

📂 2. Sample Code with Screenshot Logic

python

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import unittest

from selenium import webdriver

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

import os

import time

class MyTestCase(unittest.TestCase):

    def setUp(self):

        self.driver = webdriver.Chrome()

        self.driver.get("https://example.com")  # Replace with your URL

    def tearDown(self):

        # If the test failed, take a screenshot

        for method, error in self._outcome.errors:

            if error:

                test_method_name = self._testMethodName

                timestamp = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S")

                filename = f"screenshots/{test_method_name}_{timestamp}.png"

                os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(filename), exist_ok=True)

                self.driver.save_screenshot(filename)

                print(f"📸 Screenshot saved: {filename}")

        self.driver.quit()

    def test_example(self):

        # This will fail for demo purposes

        self.assertTrue(False, "Forcing a failure to test screenshot")

if __name__ == "__main__":

    unittest.main()

📁 What Happens

If the test fails, the tearDown() method checks for errors.

If an error is found, it takes a screenshot using driver.save_screenshot().

The image is saved with a timestamp in a /screenshots directory.

🔄 Tips for Better Use

Use setUpClass and tearDownClass for shared driver setup across tests.

You can integrate this logic into a base test class for reuse.

For large projects, integrate with test reporting tools (like Allure or HTMLTestRunner).

🏁 Conclusion

Taking screenshots on test failure in Selenium using Python’s unittest is simple and extremely useful. Just add the screenshot logic in your tearDown() method, and you’ll capture failures visually—automatically.

Learn Selenium JAVA Training in Hyderabad

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