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The development cycle is not complete without testing, which is crucial for assuring the reliability and quality of the applications. Many repetitive tasks can be a part of testing, including going over scenarios repeatedly. Testers now need the assistance of some solutions that can help them automate these repetitive tasks to lessen these redundant efforts. The ability to test applications fast and effectively is what makes automated testing a popular method for performing application testing.
Selenium is among the best toolkits for automation. Selenium is a well-known automated testing tool that offers a variety of tools and libraries that make it possible to automate user actions on a web application. It enables the creation of tests in a variety of programming languages and their execution on a wide range of operating systems and browsers.
In this article, we will go over everything you need to know about Selenium testing, including what it is, what makes up its components, what advantages and disadvantages it has, and how to use it properly to test web apps. Let’s start with Selenium
An Introduction to Selenium
Because it’s crucial to deliver a consistent user experience across devices, platforms, and browsers, web testing is a key component of a test automation strategy. There are numerous combinations to test because there are so many browsers, operating systems, and devices. However, Selenium-based automated web testing allows for quick test execution, which speeds up the testing process.
Selenium gives web application developers and testers the ability to create automated tests using a variety of programming languages, such as Java, Python, C#, etc. to test the functioning of web applications. Selenium tests can be executed on a variety of operating systems and browsers. Tests carried out with Selenium are termed Selenium testing.
Selenium is a web-based framework for automated testing that enables the automation of any kind of browser-based application. The Selenium framework can only be used to automate web-based applications; it cannot test desktop, tablet, or mobile-based applications.
To automate tests, Selenium may be integrated with several additional third-party tools. For example, TestNG can be used to develop frameworks, and ReportNG can be used for reporting.
After learning about Selenium, let’s examine the Selenium toolkit.
Components of Selenium
Selenium is not just one tool; it is a suite of tools, and each of them addresses a particular need for Selenium automation testing and aids in the creation of an automation framework. Three components make up Selenium, and they can all be utilized separately or in combination to automate tests to varying degrees.
Let’s have a quick discussion of all three components.
Selenium IDE
Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a Firefox and Chrome extension that allows for the recording, editing, debugging, and playback of functional tests. The IDE was created to expedite the creation of automation scripts. Typically, it captures user actions in the browser and exports them as a reusable script.
Selenium WebDriver
The Selenium component most frequently used is Selenium WebDriver. It is a robust and adaptable open-source test automation tool designed to automate user interaction with web browsers. A browser-based driver called WebDriver facilitates accessing and starting several browsers. To interface with browsers, WebDriver operates at the operating system level and makes use of the JSONWireProtocol protocol.
Selenium WebDriver is available for many different programming languages, including Java, C#, Python, and Perl. It has several features, like automatically identifying web page parts and taking images of testing.
Selenium Grid
To run automated tests more quickly, Selenium Grid’s hub-and-node architecture enables users to run tests simultaneously on many operating systems and browsers. With the ability to execute tests concurrently, testers may scale their test automation quickly while saving a lot of time and resources by running tests on several machines.
Let’s talk about the advantages of Selenium testing after examining what Selenium is and its components.
Capabilities of Selenium
There is no denying that Selenium offers a wide range of features, which contributes to its popularity as one of the top automation tools among testers and developers worldwide. Let’s quickly explore those capabilities:
- Selenium is a free-to-use tool. Organizations can save a lot of money using Selenium because it is simple to access and doesn’t require any upfront fees.
- The fundamental advantage of Selenium is that tests may be written in any programming language, including Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Perl, depending on the needs.
- A test automation tool must support all operating systems because different people choose to utilize various operating systems. Windows, Linux, UNIX, Mac OS, and other operating systems are all supported by Selenium.
- The use of Selenium Grid speeds up test execution by enabling the execution of numerous tests simultaneously across a large number of browsers. A quicker go-to-market also entails a quicker test execution.
- Because Selenium supports a wide range of browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, tests can be run directly in web browsers. This makes it easier for testers to avoid having to write scripts from scratch for every single browser.
- Selenium is a flexible tool that is simple to use and has an intuitive UI. Selenium makes the process of writing and running test scripts very simple.
- Numerous frameworks, including Maven, TestNG, PYTest, NUnit, Mocha, and Jasmine, are supported by Selenium. Jenkins, Circle CI, GOCD, Travis CI, Gitlab, and other CI tools can all be used with Selenium.
- Selenium can automate almost all real-world user actions, including button clicks, drag-and-drop selections, checkboxes, keystrokes, taps, and scrolling.
- Being an open-source tool, Selenium is backed by a sizable, active community. Many QAs are working on this tool, and it is simple to locate resources, tutorials, and community help. Regular updates and upgrades are made available for usage by the community.
Shortcomings of Selenium Testing
Selenium is one of the best tools for automated testing across a range of devices, but it still has some drawbacks. A few of them include
- Selenium only works with web apps that are run through web browsers. However, it cannot test desktop or mobile applications.
- Selenium’s assertion and validity support is minimal. For this reason, it frequently has to be integrated with testing frameworks like JUnit, TestNG, PyTest, etc.
- Because Selenium is an open-source technology, there is no development community, and as a result, there is no trustworthy technical assistance.
- There is no built-in reporting feature for test results in Selenium.
- To use Selenium, trained testers with familiarity with the supported programming languages are required.
- Selenium offers limited support for image testing. does not allow for the automation of code scanning scenarios like CAPTCHA and barcode reading.
- Selenium imitates user actions in the browser. It doesn’t offer assistance for testing API.
Selenium can be used to automate a variety of tests.
A popular open-source application testing tool for web applications is Selenium. To verify the functionality of web-based applications, it enables testers to create automated tests in several different programming languages. Selenium tests can be carried out on a variety of operating systems and browsers.
Selenium is frequently used to automate a variety of testing methods. The most popular test types are-
Compatibility Testing
Compatibility testing is carried out by QA experts or testers to make sure the web application fulfills performance standards across a range of browser-OS combinations.
Integration Testing
Developers conduct integration tests to examine how well various web application components work together both individually and collectively. Finding web application defects that result from integrating various components is the aim of integration testing in Selenium.
End-to-end Testing
End-to-End Tests are used to thoroughly evaluate a web application from the perspective of the user. The goal is to identify web application defects that come from the correlation between various components and confirm that all web app touch points are operational. Testers can use the Selenium WebDriver to execute the tests once they are written.
Regression Testing
Regression testing is a series of tests carried out to make sure that newly introduced features of the program work properly with the current features.
Unit Testing
The most basic kind of Selenium testing is unit tests. A unit test ensures that one piece of code functions as expected. Making a test case is the first step in writing a unit test. A set of instructions known as a test case is used to test a certain code feature or function. The Selenium WebDriver can be used to execute the test case after it has been written.
Functional Test
Similar to unit tests, functional tests examine all aspects of a web application’s functionality. Finding problems in each of the web application’s functional components is the aim of the functional test. Only after all of the components have completed the development stage testers should use the Selenium WebDriver functional testing.
Different types of Selenium Framework
A framework separates the entire piece of code into smaller chunks that may be tested individually for different functionalities. The Selenium Frameworks that are most frequently used include:
Data Driven Framework- This technique separates the data set from the test case. Without having to make any significant changes to the code, testers can alter the test case for a certain functionality utilizing the data-driven framework.
Keyword-Driven Framework- The technique known as a “keyword-driven framework” separates all of the operations or instructions from the test case itself. Similar to a data-driven framework, this technique also stores the input data in external files like Excel and CSV. By indicating them in the Excel file, testers may simply control the functionalities they want to test with the keyword-driven framework.
Hybrid Framework- This method combines the greatest aspects of keyword-driven and data-driven frameworks. It is combinations and permutations of the two frameworks listed above.
How to effectively run Selenium tests
It can be difficult to write good Selenium scripts, but with a few pointers, you can automate application tests more effectively and quickly.
A few of these tips include:
- Always begin by creating a straightforward test case that confirms the operation of a single component.
- Make sure all separate components function properly when combined, and keep the tests brief.
- To guarantee that the tests execute without error, be sure to include timeouts in the test code.
- To accelerate the testing process, use Selenium Grid for parallel testing. In this way, performance or compatibility issues that might not be apparent when performing the tests on a single browser or device might be found.
- Take advantage of all the Selenium WebDriver’s capabilities, including the tools for taking screenshots and capturing videos. These can be very helpful for debugging purposes.
- Always run tests on various operating systems and browsers.
- Keep the test code well-maintained and organized so that it may be quickly modified and reused in the future.
Utilize LambdaTest to optimize Selenium testing
Selenium is an excellent framework for web automation testing, but it might be a bit difficult for beginners to utilize because they need to have solid programming knowledge and experience. Because of this, Selenium is only used by large organizations to automate tests.
LambdaTest is a cloud-based digital experience testing platform for automation testing that satisfies all of the testing requirements of testers, including cross browser testing, data-driven testing, manual exploratory testing, and the ability to automate web, Android, iOS. Since everything is already set up in the cloud, using the platform is incredibly quick and easy. Testers can immediately begin creating and running their tests.
To achieve continuous testing, LambdaTest may be easily integrated with Selenium and other testing technologies. LambdaTest offers a platform with all the devices and browsers needed to perform Selenium test scripts while Selenium provides the framework.
Additionally, this platform gives testers access to the greatest test coverage, enterprise-grade security, and advanced reporting to help them understand the test results more clearly. It also provides analytics to help them take proactive steps to increase productivity, and the ability to execute tests more quickly. This platform speeds up test execution by carefully analyzing website performance, using parallel testing, and cross-browser compatibility testing to obtain greater test coverage in less time.
Conclusion
It may be said that Selenium testing is more efficient, error-free, requires less human resource investment, provides regression testing, and functional testing, and is executed flawlessly. Selenium makes it possible to run tests more often, something that manual testing finds to be extremely challenging.
Testers can develop as many automated test scripts and frameworks for various web browser apps using Selenium. To obtain the data and analyze them, testers can create test execution reports with ease. Overall, Selenium greatly simplifies a tester’s job.
